


Through the Motions

by WillyFourEyes



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Magic, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Slice of Life, Urban Fantasy, Witches
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-10-25
Packaged: 2019-10-29 08:31:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 18
Words: 61,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17804621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WillyFourEyes/pseuds/WillyFourEyes
Summary: Through the Motions is the story of Deanna Richardson, a young artist from the quiet suburban town of Sharonia. After visiting a nearby consignment shop to sell one of her paintings, she runs into a young witch-in-training who goes by the name “Sol”. When Sol asks for help in activating her new magic wand, Deanna accepts the offer and is eventually given the wand as a gift. Driven by curiosity and an artist’s innate thirst for inspiration, Deanna strives to learn more about her new powers and the ins and outs of magic in general.





	1. The Witch of Emerson Park

When I was a kid, I liked to look up in the sky for about an hour before going to bed every night. There were hundreds, probably thousands of stars visible over the Sharonia skyline without a telescope, but only a handful of patterns were officially recognized constellations. I liked to make my own up, but they never really looked like the things they were supposed to be about. A friend once told me that the real constellations were the same way - the names were only supposed to be symbolic.

I started working on a painting of a constellation I liked to call "The Sword". I had seen another one nearby that reminded me of a shield, but I was told that a constellation already existed for that one. The painting was mostly finished, but I was too tired to continue working on it, so I cleaned myself off and went to bed.

I went back to work on the painting the next morning after I had finished eating breakfast and my parents had left for work. All I needed to do was touch up the lines on the sword, and then take a picture of the painting to add to my portfolio. I also made a note to replace the drop cloth on the floor before they returned home. I rarely let my parents inside my room when I wasn't painting, so I didn't dare imagine their reaction if they came inside and saw the walls and floor covered in acrylic paint splatters.

I needed some money to help get me through the week, so I decided to sell my painting at a place called Cherry's Consignments just a few blocks to the east of my house. I passed by Cherry's many times on my way to work but I hadn't thought to check it out until I had a bit of free time to myself. The building was well-lit inside, but there was little room to walk around as almost half of the available space was taken up by tall shelves stocked haphazardly with sundry goods. Each item had a price tag attached to it, with prices ranging anywhere from three dollars for a set of Mini Men dolls to two hundred for a fifty-year-old porcelain teapot.

A young man sat behind the cash register looking for something to watch on the color TV behind him. It took him a few seconds to dust off his Sharonia High Rollers T-shirt and turn around to acknowledge me after I rang the bell next to the register. I had a feeling he was either new to the job or wished he could have been anywhere else.

"Welcome to Cherry's Consignments," he said in a low monotone. "If you can spell it, we can sell it. I'm Elias. How can I help you?"

"I'd like to sell something," I told him.

"Okay, just give me a minute. What's your name, ma'am?"

"Deanna Richardson."

Elias reached under the desk and pulled out a large black binder stuffed to bursting with notebook paper, occasionally separated with lettered tabs. He opened it to the tab with the letter "R" and rapidly flipped through the pages, each of which was topped by a customer's name and address, followed by a table containing the names of items they put up for sale, the date the item was put up for sale, the asking price for the item, and when and if the item was sold. It was a lot of information to write down, and I wondered whether he also had it stored on a computer somewhere. Elias looked up at me and shook his head after stopping on a page for Lucinda Rider. "I don't see your name in here," he said. "This your first time?"

I nodded.

"All right, Deanna - is it okay if I call you Deanna? - just take a moment to read this contract, sign it, and then put your name and address here."

Elias then showed me two sheets of paper: one containing the page for the binder, and another containing the contract between myself and the store. I read the contract as carefully as I could before signing it, but I couldn't understand much of it other than the parts where the store took a twenty-five percent cut of all sales and charged a ten percent up-front fee to store the item for up to seven days. It sounded a bit harsh to me to let them take such a large percentage of whatever I sold, but I figured I could reach a wider audience through Cherry's than I would by selling my paintings directly from home.

I opted to sell my constellation painting for fifty dollars as a test. If it failed to sell at that price, I planned on lowering it to forty to see if it would draw more interest.

Elias looked at the painting for a few seconds before applying a price tag to it and placing it on one of the shelves by the wall near the front window. "This ain't half bad," he said. "You do a lot of paintings like this?"

"Not really," I admitted. "I'm more into painting cityscapes and things like that. You know, concrete stuff. Pardon the pun."

"That's cool," he said with a chuckle. "I'll let you know if your painting sells. Just keep an eye on your mail, okay?"

I nodded and waved to Elias on my way out of the store. A chime sounded as I pushed the door open, but it was so quiet that I doubted anyone in the store could hear it.

My search for inspiration for my next painting led me southward toward Emerson Park, a large field protected on all sides by steel fencing. Although streetlights lined the main diagonal path from northwest to southeast, there was a sign on one corner that stated that the park was only open to the public from sunrise to sunset.

Over on the southwest corner of the park, to the west of the playground area, I saw a young woman in an all-red blouse and blue jeans standing by herself in the middle of a large patch of dirt. She looked around for a moment and reached into her pocket, and I scrambled for a place to hide in case she was carrying a weapon and thought I was an attacker. I slipped behind a nearby tree on the outside corner and waited for about ten seconds, curious about what she was going to do next.

The young woman drew a circle in the dirt around her with her foot and raised her right hand upward, pointing what looked like a foot-long steel rod at a nearby tree branch. She slowly waved the rod around in a circle above her, gradually moving faster until the circle was as large as the one around her feet. I noticed a faint golden glow when the rod hit the sunlight just right, and I realized that the light was coming from a citrine gem embedded in the tip.

I had read stories and heard rumors about witches and wizards, but this was the first time I had ever seen one up close. I wanted to run and hide again because I wasn't sure what spells she was capable of casting, and yet I was mesmerized by her movements as she started waving her magic wand around more wildly, spinning and twirling around within the dirt circle she had drawn for herself. Once she settled into a rhythm, she became a blur of red, blue, and a streak of gold, with strands of wavy brown hair flying every which way. Finding the perfect time to snap a picture of her was difficult, so I waited for her to turn away from me while I pulled out my cell phone and recorded a short portion of her dance.

After a minute, the young woman stopped dancing, and I could see her smiling as the gem on her wand lit up like a light bulb. Her excitement was only brief, for the gem quickly lost its glow and returned to its original color.

"Why isn't it working?" she asked, clutching her wand and shaking it in the vain hope of making it glow again. "The guy at the shop told me this was how to charge it…"

The woman hastily rubbed out the circle in the dirt with her sneakers before shifting her attention to the tree on the corner. There was no more reason for me to stand behind it, as I figured she would have eventually found me anyway.

"Hey, you!" she said forcefully. "How long were you standing there? How much did you see?"

The young woman's voice was intimidating, but the way she held her wand loosely from her fingertips made me think it was partially an act. Still, I had no intention of getting any further on her bad side, even if her magic dance failed to fulfill its purpose.

"Uh, a few minutes, maybe?" I said, answering both rhetorical questions.

"Well, just forget you ever saw anything," she said.

There was no way I could "just forget" what I had seen. Here I was, in the presence of a flesh-and-blood witch, with video evidence in the palm of my hand. Such a rarity among Sharonians was meant to be preserved, even if it meant keeping it to myself for the moment. The longer I stood still, the more agitated she appeared to get.

"Why are you still standing there? There's nothing else to see. Go home."

I tried to stay calm, hoping to catch her off-guard and get her to stop yelling at me. "Could you at least tell me what you were doing?"

"Do you promise not to tell anyone?"

"Even if _I_ did, there's no guarantee anyone else will."

The witch looked around frantically but only saw a few people calmly walking past her and paying little attention to her or her wand. I hadn't noticed any of them while I watched her dance, so I thought that either they had only arrived in the park recently, or they didn't find anything unusual about what she was doing. Either way, it looked like she was in the clear for the moment.

"Do you see this wand here?" the witch asked in a much calmer tone.

She presented the wand to me in the palms of both her hands. For such a simple tool, it looked quite sturdy, and the citrine gem on the tip still looked brilliant despite its apparent inability to absorb or expel magical energy. "I just bought it a day ago," she added, "and I can't get it to charge up."

"How can you tell?" I asked.

"Take a closer look."

The witch pointed to a long, clear groove on her wand's surface. A tiny sliver was filled with a golden light starting from where the gem was socketed. It reminded me of the battery indicator on my cell phone, or the indicators on one of those premium-brand batteries that showed you how much power they had left if you pressed a certain spot. I always imagined magic wands like this one to be a lot more low-tech, without the need for visual aids.

"Was that why you were doing that weird dance earlier?" I asked.

"Don't call my dance weird!" she said, snapping her head back and grimacing as if I'd tried to punch her. "It's supposed to work by drawing from the earth's natural energy. That's why I figured a place like this park would be the perfect spot."

"Wouldn't it be more practical to do this in your backyard? You'd have a lot more privacy, and you wouldn't have to deal with people spying on you. I mean, witches aren't exactly a common sight in this town."

"I'm well aware of that," she said. "Unfortunately, I live in an apartment downtown, so I don't have a backyard of my own. I can't go back home and tell my mother my wand doesn't work! She'd yell at me for wasting my money and tell me to send it back."

There didn't appear to be any surface damage to the wand or its gem. I couldn't figure out what was wrong with it, and I didn't know of any repair shops in the area that specialized in magic tools. I stood and listened to the witch give all kinds of excuses for why she couldn't simply buy a new magic wand, ranging from lack of funding to a wand being a fundamental part of a witch's identity, comparing it to a fisherman without a fishing rod. She then gave me a mischievous smirk and asked, "Can you do me a favor?"

"Huh? But I hardly even know you," I said.

"Okay, then," she replied. "Just so we're not strangers anymore, you can call me 'Sol'."

I wasn't sure what this 'Sol' character was up to, but if she trusted me enough to tell me her name - or alias, from the sound of it - the least I could do was return the favor and hear her out.

"'Sol', huh? You mean, like the sun?" I asked.

"No. It's short for 'Marisol'."

"Oh, I see! Nice to meet you. I'm Deanna."

"Okay, Deanna," said Sol, "do you think you can give me a hand with this?"

I suddenly regretted my decision to pass Emerson Park instead of going straight home from Cherry's. All I came to do was gather inspiration for a new painting. I wanted to tell Sol she was making a mistake lending her wand to a newbie, but I knew neither of us could go home until we figured out how to fix it.

"Wait a minute," I said. "Didn't you get some kind of instruction manual or spellbook when you bought this thing?"

"It didn't come with one," Sol replied. "The only thing the guy told me was how to charge it up before I started using it. I feel like I'm forgetting something, though..."

"I'll see what I can do," I said hesitantly.

The moment she handed the wand to me, my body went stiff and I shivered all over. Sol's hand completely covered the metal part of the wand, so the gem was the only free spot available for me to grab. What little energy it had left before I touched it was completely used up. I expected Sol to burst into hysterical laughter and a camera crew to emerge from behind the trees at any moment, but when I looked in her direction, she calmly walked over to a bench along the crosswalk to observe me.

I stretched my right hand out to give myself a good idea of the radius of my circle and marked a spot in the dirt a few feet away with a fallen tree branch. This gave me plenty of room to maneuver, assuming Sol's ritual didn't require her to stay in one spot. After taking a deep breath and inspecting the wand a second time to confirm there was no damage or excess dirt, I began my dance. I couldn't move around as quickly or gracefully as Sol did, so I tried to focus on giving the wand enough ground to cover to potentially draw in as much energy as it needed, rather than copying Sol's dance moves to the very last step. My right arm got heavy again as I tried to maintain my grip on the wand and not send it flying into a tree or onto the ground.

I eventually stopped and struck a pose, stretching my wand arm out in front of me at no one in particular. All that spinning around gave me a headache, so I lurched over to the bench across from Sol so I could recover. I looked down at the wand and was disappointed to find that its energy meter had only filled up halfway after all I'd done. When Sol looked over at me to inspect it, I was afraid she was going to make me get up and do the ritual a second time to fill it all the way up. Instead, she took the wand from me and waved it around a bit to make sure the gem retained its shine for longer than a few seconds in her possession.

"I'm not sure what you did differently," said Sol, "but I think it worked. Thanks, Deanna."

"Glad I could help," I said, still panting.

Sol put her wand down for a moment to check on me. I had regained my bearings after taking some time to rest, but my body still felt tingly from when I first touched the wand. "What are you going to do now?" she asked.

"After I get a bite to eat," I said, "I think I might do some painting."

"Really? What are you going to paint?"

"I haven't decided yet." It was hard for me to say that with any degree of seriousness, but anything less than a stone-faced expression would give away my true intentions.

Sol got up from the bench and dusted herself off, and then started walking toward the exit. "This was a bit more fun than I expected," she said, "but I think I need to get going now."

"I should probably be on my way, too," I told her as I started off in the opposite direction. After taking a few steps, I turned around, realizing I forgot something. "Sol?"

Sol stopped in her tracks at the corner of 31st Street and York Avenue where she had entered. "What is it?" she asked.

"Sorry for spying on you earlier."

"It's okay. I'm used to it. You really should be more careful, though. What would you have done if I attacked you?"

Before I could offer a response, Sol interrupted me by waving her hand in front of my face. "On second thought, don't answer that."

Perhaps it was for the best that I didn't tell her I would have cried for help, because a violent encounter with a witch was bound to draw the attention of the police and the media, and possibly even the McCarthy County troopers if things got out of hand. Sol came off to me as somewhat boorish at first, but she didn't seem like the "criminally violent" type.

"So, do you want to meet here again tomorrow?" I asked.

Sol shook her head vigorously.

"How about Cherry's on 27th?"

"I'm down for that," said Sol. "Tomorrow at two? What do you say?"

"Sounds good to me," I said.

We parted ways from there, with Sol heading south along York Avenue toward her apartment. As I walked past the spot of my magic dance, I saw that most of the grass inside the circle had dried up while the grass outside of it was still green. Some oak bark chips had also fallen from the nearby trees onto the area surrounding the circle. I wondered if this was what Sol meant when she said her dance drew on the earth's natural energy, and if it was something anyone with a wand could do if they knew the proper movements.

Dabbling in magic looked a lot cleaner than dealing with acrylic and watercolor paints, but I knew I'd have a harder time explaining what happened at Emerson Park to my parents when they got home and asked me about my day.


	2. Lasting Impressions

The long walk back to my house from Emerson Park gave me enough time to shake off the tension I felt after grasping Sol's magic wand crystal-first. I'd been told over and over again since I was a kid to never touch a dangerous object by anything other than its handle, as my parents and teachers worried that I would seriously injure myself. In a way, I was thankful Sol's wand didn't have any magical energy to burn when she handed it to me. There was a good chance my carelessness would cost me my right hand, and Sol would have received a long, harsh lecture from the guys down at "the station", followed by the kind of overnight stay no self-respecting Sharonian wanted to have on their permanent record.

When I walked up to the front door and fumbled in my pocket for my house keys, the tingling sensation came back to my fingers. I thought it was a side effect of the wand incident, but the tingling went away as soon as I put away my keys. When I tried to close the door from the inside, a sharp, searing pain shot through my right hand as if I'd accidentally laid it down on an iron that had been plugged in for a minute. I looked down at my hand and started freaking out when I saw that the palm had turned bright red.

Instead of spending time pondering why my doorknob had burned me, I rushed to the kitchen to run my hand under some cool water for several minutes until the pain in my right hand subsided. The first-aid kit in the bottom drawer of the medicine cabinet hadn't been used in so long that there was a thin layer of dust on top, but the bandages inside were still sealed. I felt that wrapping my hand in gauze tape was a bit excessive for my injury, so I grabbed the largest bandage I could find that wouldn't arouse too much suspicion from my parents and slapped it on my palm, where it hurt the most.

Starting that new painting was out of the question for the moment. I still had the video footage of Sol on my phone, so I could at least review that to find a decent shot to use as a reference image.

Mom kept a stack of smooth jazz CDs next to the living room stereo that she'd sometimes listen to after a stressful week at work. I picked one out at random and played it to break the uncomfortable silence in the house. It helped take my mind off the pain a little bit, but it took a few pain medicine pills and some rest to actually make it go away.

Before I could fully load the video, I got a phone call from Randy Lippman, one of my co-workers at the local Ada's supermarket.

"How you doin', Didi?" he asked with a peppy, high-pitched voice. I pictured him trying to smile at his cell phone as he talked, wishing some of that enthusiasm would rub off on me.

"I've had worse days," I said. "How about you?"

"Pretty good, I guess. Listen... can you do me a favor?"

There was that phrase again. At least I knew Randy wouldn't try to make me do anything that might cause me to hurt myself.

"What do you need?" I asked.

"Could you come in for me this afternoon? I have a doctor's appointment at one o'clock and I won't be able to make it."

"Why? What happened?"

"It's a bit of an embarrassing story," he said. "I'll tell you about it later. So, will you be able to help me out today?"

It was hard for me to clench my right hand into a fist with the bandage in the way. It only hurt a little bit, but picking up and moving bags of groceries around for several hours was probably going to make things worse.

"Sorry, Randy," I said to him. "Maybe another time."

"Oh... All right, then. You'll be in on Wednesday morning, right?"

"Yeah. Come visit me at lunch if you've got time."

"I don't know if I'll be able to make it," he said, "but I'll try."

I said goodbye to Randy, trying to sound as cheerful as he did when he first called me.

After hanging up my cell phone, I started watching my recorded video from the beginning. It was difficult to hold the phone camera still while I was standing behind that tree outside Emerson Park, but I managed to get a few good minutes of Sol's magic dance on film.

I had no idea what the actual steps of the dance were supposed to look like, or if there even _were_ any official steps, but Sol made it look so easy. Whereas my version of the dance was done hastily to get the wand charged as quickly as possible, Sol was graceful with every step - not a single fumble or wasted movement.

At around the two-minute mark of the video, I pinpointed a frame where Sol was about to raise her wand arm in the air to signify the end of the ritual. I couldn't have asked for a more fitting pose if I'd asked her to do it myself. I fumbled around with the phone trying to press the buttons using only my left hand, but I eventually got it to take a snapshot of Sol's faux-heroic wand stance. It almost felt like a cruel joke that her wand didn't respond positively to her dance. Perhaps it didn't really care all that much about the aesthetics of a spell as long as its holder got the job done.

At noon, I heated up a slice of frozen pepperoni pizza in the microwave. I preferred the pizza we ordered from Rococo's every month to the store-bought brands for its softer crust, but I needed to make my money last for the rest of the week, and that meant no takeout food or ordering online until either my painting sold or I got my paycheck from Ada's.

My entertainment options for the next few hours were limited while I continued to nurse my right hand. I couldn't play video games or do much exercise beyond stretching. We also managed to sign up for the only high-speed internet plan in town that didn't include cable television. Dad told me he did it to save money by not paying for shows that we'd never see because we would all only watch a few channels anyway - he would go for all the movie channels, Mom would watch all the music channels, and I would lean toward cartoons and the occasional comedy show. After the afternoon news aired, I watched a couple of quiz shows and tried to play along with the contestants. The questions weren't designed to be difficult since they aired on syndicated daytime television, and I was confident enough in my knowledge of pop culture trivia to get most of the answers right without looking them up on the internet.

Dad came home a little after three o'clock carrying a bag of freshly-baked donuts from the bakery in his right hand, and a stained apron in his left. I reached up to give him a big hug just after he stepped in the door and sat the bag down on the coffee table. He wasn't very muscular, but he still had a strong grip that made me thankful his first impulse wasn't to shake my hand.

"How's my precious daughter doing today?" he asked, his deep voice betraying his somewhat skinny frame.

"I finished the painting I was working on last night," I said, showing him the picture of "The Sword" on my phone's gallery.

"That's wonderful! Are you going to let your mother or I watch you paint a picture one day?"

"It'll take a while for me to make another good one, but when I do, I'll let you guys see it before I give it to Cherry's."

I was glad Dad appreciated the work I'd been doing. It had been almost a year since I last painted something I was proud enough to put up for sale. My bedroom was full of paintings of random houses and skylines I'd seen while we were out on the road, most of which were done while I was in art school and was just starting out as a painter. Even if I had started going to Cherry's earlier, I doubted those paintings would sell, so I kept them in my room for atmosphere.

Dad flopped down on the sofa and pulled out a powdered donut from the page. The cream-filled ones were one of my favorite flavors, but I hated the mess they made when you bit into one so I grabbed a chocolate glazed donut instead. When I pulled my hand out of the bag, Dad looked at me with one eyebrow raised. "Is everything okay?" he asked.

"Yeah," I said. "Why?"

"Your hand..."

He leaned in to take a closer look at my right hand while I tried to play off my injury by eating my donut. The longer I tried to hide it from him, the more curious he got.

"Let me see that," he said firmly.

As I ate the last bit of my donut, he lowered my hand and gasped in shock when he saw the bandage, demanding to know what happened.

"I... burned it?" I couldn't believe what I was saying, but it was the best explanation I could think of to describe my predicament. The way Dad continued to look at me with his right eyebrow up, it became obvious that he didn't believe me either.

I was prepared to tell him right out that I burned it while closing the front door, knowing full well how ridiculous it sounded. A recap of the last few hours of my day spilled out in disjointed order in response to his every question - going to Cherry's to drop off my painting, how I met Sol in Emerson Park, her identity as a possible witch, how she asked me to help recharge her magic wand, and how I got zapped when she handed it to me. I left it to Dad to try to piece everything together for himself, but I had a feeling I already knew the answer: my injury wasn't sustained when I touched the doorknob, but when I was given the magic wand. I hadn't noticed it at the time because I immediately grabbed the metal part of the wand after Sol gave it to me. It wasn't until the tingling in my body wore off that I actually felt the pain in my hand, and making contact with the doorknob only made things worse.

After listening to my explanation, the smile Dad wore when he entered the house melted into a half-frown. "I don't know how you got mixed up in this witch business," he said, "but I'm booking a doctor's appointment for you for tomorrow morning."

"What? You don't need to do that, Dad," I pleaded. "I'll be fine!"

"We'll let Dr. Keller make that decision. For now, just keep taking your medicine, and don't take the bandage off until the doctor has a chance to take a look at it. Understand?"

"Yes, Dad."

There was nothing else I could say to counter that. Dad scheduled an appointment for me to get a morning exam, and then called the bakery to request a day off, citing "a family issue". Neither of us was happy with the arrangement. Dad didn't like having to drive all the way out to St. Gabriel to visit the doctor's office because of all the traffic, and I was worried that the doctor would ask me a bunch of weird questions, especially since magic was involved.

My hand didn't hurt as much after taking some more of the pain medicine. It still hurt when I poked the area covered by the bandage, but I could once again close my hand around one of my large paintbrushes for a few minutes at a time. I decided to take a chance and start my painting of Sol while I waited for dinner. Painting a base for the body was easy enough - some caramel brown for the skin and streaks of dark brown to represent the hair. If I swapped the two colors and shortened the model's hair a bit, I could have turned it into a self-portrait.

Mom walked into the room just as I'd started filling in the background of the painting. "Deanna, could you sit down for a moment?" she asked as she sat down near the foot of my bed and patted the corner next to her. Although she phrased the question as a suggestion, it felt more like a command since she kept her eyes on me the whole time as I sat my brushes and palette down next to the easel before taking my seat. Her wrinkled blue blouse suggested she had a busy day at the library and was in no mood to mess around.

"Now, your father told me about your little 'misadventure' in Emerson Park today," she continued. "What were you doing down there, anyway? Why didn't you just come home right after you left Cherry's?"

"I just wanted to take a walk and look for inspiration," I said. "I didn't know that I'd find a witch there. I guess I got lucky."

"You were lucky, all right - lucky she didn't turn around and zap you the moment she saw you!"

Mom paused for a moment to close the door - something she only did either when she was about to take a nap or start yelling. Perhaps in an effort to avoid the second outcome, she took a few deep breaths before sitting back down. I clutched my bedspread and braced for her to start yelling anyway, but she continued to speak in a calm, serious tone that I found more unnerving.

"Now, tomorrow after your appointment with Dr. Keller, I want you to stay here and watch the house," Mom said, "and don't go anywhere without your father's permission."

"Am I seriously being grounded? I'm 24 years old, Mom!" I quickly covered my mouth after that outburst, as it would have given Mom a good excuse to ground me for real.

"I don't want you getting hurt again, honey."

"Can I at least try to explain the situation to Sol - uh, to _Marisol_ tomorrow?" I asked.

"Only if your father gets to go with you."

My face sank into my palms when Mom told me of her "condition" for my meeting. Neither of them had met Sol before, and I didn't want them to make a bad first impression. Given Dad's tendency to crack bad jokes in the company of strangers, I feared the conversation would go south in a hurry if I let him talk first.

"All right, all right," I mumbled. "Can we talk about something else now? _Anything_ else?"

Mom patted me on the shoulder and said, "No problem. Now don't stay up here too long. We're having spaghetti tonight, and I wouldn't want you to miss out."

"Sounds great! I'll be down in a few minutes."

After everything I'd gone through in the last several hours, the spaghetti dinner sounded like it would be the highlight of my day so far.

A little while after my chat with Mom, I went downstairs and listened to her and Dad talk about their work days over dinner. The library just recently introduced a comic book section to try to draw in younger readers. Mom always saw the same group of kids come in after the final school bell to read back issues of Street Smashers, and she had to yell at them daily because only one of the kids had a library card and he and his friends would make a lot of noise while they were reading. Dad's day at the bakery sounded positively mundane by comparison. The only conflict he had to deal with came after work when he had to call out to arrange my appointment with Dr. Keller. His boss chided him for calling out on such short notice because another worker had already called out sick, and someone had to be moved up from the next day's shift to cover for both of them. I offered to wash the dishes after we ate, but Mom repeated Dad's warning to me against getting my bandage wet.

After that, I went back upstairs to my bedroom to continue my painting. It was lonely not having anyone else to talk to, so I called Randy again because I was curious about his injury.

"Hi, Randy!" I said with cautious cheer. "How'd your doctor's visit go?"

"As expected, unfortunately," he answered.

"'Unfortunately'? What do you mean? What happened?"

"Well, it's like this... My buddies and I were playing a heated game of three-on-three over the weekend. We were up by two and just needed one point to win the game. I was feeling pretty confident in my skills, so I figured I'd try to finish things off with a dunk."

I waited to hear where the story was going even though I knew there wouldn't be a happy ending.

"So I got the ball," Randy added, "I shook one defender down and tried to drive my way to the hoop and... do you know how they say 'that guy's ankles got broken' when someone gets fooled by a crossover?"

"Let me guess: you went for the dunk and fell down the wrong way on your ankle?"

"Exactly! Well, except for the part where I went for the dunk."

The thought of Randy rolling his ankle on an attempted crossover dribble made me cringe. I could only imagine how painful it must have been for him to experience it.

"How badly does it hurt?" I asked. "Can you still move around?"

"A little bit, but the doctor says I'll need to be on crutches for a couple of days," he said after what sounded like a combination of a groan and a sigh.

"I'm sorry to hear that. I wish there was more I could do other than say 'I hope you have a quick recovery'."

"You don't have to worry about me, Didi, but I appreciate the call. I'm sure I'll be back to my old self before long. I'll have to take it easy on the dribbling, though."

I felt bad for laughing along with Randy's pain, but he seemed to be in good spirits in spite of what happened to him.

After hanging up the phone, I went back to work, thinking less about my injury as the painting started to take shape. Sol's hair and facial features were more defined, and I was able to draw the fingers wrapped around her wand in greater detail.

I took another look at my video and noticed that there were none of the dazzling special effects I expected to see from a spell being cast - no particles of light dancing around, and no leaves or dust swirling around or shifting in the wind. The grass around Sol's feet was still green when she was finished, and her footprints in the dirt were the only sign she had even attempted the dance. With nothing to use as a point of reference for evidence of magic activity, I painted some beams of golden light shining from the magic wand's gemstone. It was hardly realistic but I decided to roll with it, believing most depictions of magic were highly stylized in order to appeal to outsiders.

It was 9:30 when I finished the painting, and I was starting to get tired. It took me even longer than normal to clean up because I had to be very careful not to get my bandage wet. It already felt like it was about to slip off, and I prayed that it would hold on long enough to allow my wound to continue healing until the doctor had a chance to look at it.

The night sky was cloudy, blocking my view of the stars. I thought of my painting of "The Sword" and hoped that whoever bought it would try to look for that constellation the next time they went stargazing. After taking another dose of pain pills, I said "good night" to Mom and Dad, and then went to bed.

As I slept, I wondered what Sol was going to do with her magic wand once she learned how to use it properly. Assuming she was telling the truth about not having a companion spellbook to study, she was going to have a tough time unless she either found a library that carried the exact book she needed or spent some time on the internet researching spell gestures and their effects. I wanted to visit the shop where she bought her wand one day to see what other varieties of wands and trinkets they sold, even if it was only to find out how much more there was to this whole "magic" thing.

When I woke up the next morning, my right palm felt clammy and gross, and there was a sticky residue around where my bandage was supposed to be. I must have been so sweaty that it fell off while I was asleep. Surely enough, I found the used bandage lying on the floor between my bed and the nightstand, and I wasted no time throwing it out.

I looked down at my right hand one more time, and while the redness had mostly faded away, I saw a circular indentation in the center of my palm that I definitely didn't remember seeing before. I knew that something weird happened when I touched the doorknob, but I couldn't figure out why my wound was suddenly _glowing._

Perhaps I should have put the gauze tape on after all.


	3. Brand Recognition

When I saw the thumb-sized hole in my right palm, I wanted to scream again. There was just something so crazy, so... _ wrong _ about a magically-induced wound that carved out a small chunk of my flesh without leaving behind any blood or scars. It went against everything I ever learned about the human body in high school health class. A wound like that should have left a black-and-blue mark, not a glowing gold one.

I wanted to put on some gloves to hide that hole from everyone - preferably a set of fingerless gloves that I could wear with most of my outfits without looking silly.

"Deanna!" Dad shouted from downstairs. "Is everything alright?"

"Yeah, Dad, I'm fine!" I shouted back.

"Come downstairs and get something to eat! We have to leave in an hour for your appointment."

"I know! I'm coming!"

I would get downstairs eventually, but first I had to go to the bathroom to take a quick shower, get dressed, and rub some lotion on my hands now that it was safe to do so. There was another pack of bandages in the cabinet behind the bathroom mirror. Once my hands dried off, I pulled out a square bandage that was smaller than the one I just threw out, but was still big enough to cover the wound without alarming my parents any further. 

When I went down into the living room, I saw Mom grimacing at the mirror across from the television while she tried to untangle her hair. In her right hand was a brush covered with so many bristles I was surprised she didn't hurt herself picking it up. "Morning, sweetie," she said, tilting her head slightly to the left so she could see my reflection.

"Morning, Mom," I said, slowly walking around the coffee table to get a better look. "You okay there?"

It seemed the more she brushed, the less straight her hair got. I considered myself thankful to have hair that only went down to my neck so that I didn't have to struggle as much with brushing. After about a minute, Mom put down the brush and ran her fingers through her hair to ensure she didn't miss any spots.

"Yeah, everything's fine," she said. "Is your hand feeling any better?"

"A little bit. It doesn't ache anymore, anyway."

"Good." Mom turned around and rested her hand on my shoulder, and started speaking to me in the same soft-but-stern tone from yesterday. "Now just remember to keep calm and answer all of the doctor's questions truthfully. I'm sure he'll find a way to fix your hand in no time!"

"I don't think it's broken, Mom," I complained. "I just hurt it on the door. Besides, I don't think Dr. Keller's the kind of doctor who can 'fix' body parts."

"You know what I mean, Deanna. Now go on and get your breakfast. You don't want to be late now, do you?"

I left Mom to continue cleaning herself up for work and went to the kitchen to get a bowl of bran flakes, adding some dried strawberries and blueberries for flavor. Dad was in the dining room eating a plate of scrambled eggs as fast as he could, quietly signaling for me to hurry up.

"How can you eat that stuff?" I asked, looking at Dad's plate of half-eaten eggs in disgust.

"What are you talking about? These are delicious," Dad said between bites. "You used to love these when you were a kid."

"Yeah...that was back then. Now, though…"

I didn't want to finish the rest of the sentence since we were both eating, but every time Dad opened his mouth with the scrambled eggs still in them, it looked like he was about to gag. It almost made  _ me _ want to gag. If I was going to finish my breakfast and keep it down, I would have to avoid eye contact with Dad until we both cleaned our plates.

Once we were all finished, we all got into Dad's mint-green two-door coupe so he could drop Mom off at the library up the street by the bus terminal. She kissed Dad goodbye, and then gave me a hug and once again told me to behave myself in the doctor's office.

With the front passenger seat now open, I moved up from the back and sat next to Dad, asking him to switch off the news talk radio station and put some "driving tunes" on. It felt like the preset stations played a lot of music that tended toward one of two extremes - soft and sugary enough to rot one's teeth, or hard and edgy enough to break those same teeth in one bite. There was one hip-hop station that played music we both liked, but a lot of the songs that made it to air had so much censored swearing that it was a miracle anyone even knew the lyrics. I eventually gave in and let Dad turn to ECLS, a radio station that prided itself on playing "nothing but the classic hits, all day, every day!" It was a polite way of calling itself an "oldies" station without actually using the O-word and making its target audience feel old. Most of the songs leaned toward the "fluffy" end of the scale, but I still found myself bobbing my head to the melodies, even though I was unfamiliar with the lyrics.

We ran into some heavy traffic right after we crossed into St. Gabriel. I looked ahead to try to see what was causing the delay, but a huge delivery truck blocked my view.

"Dad?" I asked, shouting over the cacophony of car horns around us. "Why aren't there any medical centers a bit, you know...closer to home?"

"Not enough space in town, I guess," Dad said. "St. Gabriel is the closest one we were able to find."

Our car lurched ahead a few inches every minute or so in sync with the traffic. Dad and I looked around for another path around the traffic jam, but the only side streets I saw led to either dead ends or cul-de-sacs. Traffic going in the opposite direction proceeded uninhibited, making me think of a joke I heard from a customer about the St. Gabriel motto: "You'll Fight to Get In, But You Can't Wait to Get Out".

After what felt like an hour of stop-and-go movement, I looked to my right and saw the culprit - a construction crew trying to fix a series of potholes along the road we were driving on, reducing traffic from two lanes to one for about half a mile. The aggravating honking finally stopped once we passed the construction zone, allowing us to go back to enjoying our music.

About fifteen minutes later, Dad pulled into the parking lot of St. Gabriel Medical Center, a medium-sized, single-floor building not too far away from a strip mall. The outer walls were painted a peculiar shade of white that reminded me of a mad scientist's laboratory. The inside was a bit more inviting - it was very well-lit and decorated all around with baby blue diamond-print wallpaper. I couldn't get over how many windows the building had, both on the inside and outside. It was a wonder anyone could get any sort of privacy during an exam.

A young woman wearing a white shirt and an embroidered St. Gabriel Medical pin above her left breast greeted us as we approached the main reception desk. "Hello! Are you here for an appointment, sir?" she asked.

"I'm not," Dad replied, "but my daughter is."

"Okay, no problem. What's your daughter's name?"

"Deanna Richardson."

The receptionist typed something into her computer and then turned her attention to me. "Oh, there you are. You've got a 9:30 with Dr. Keller, correct?"

"I guess so," I said, having no idea what else Dad discussed on the phone.

I showed my photo ID and health insurance cards to the receptionist and stood back as she typed some more, amazed by how quickly her fingers moved across the keyboard. If I had learned to type a little bit faster in high school, I probably would have taken a job as a secretary or a desk clerk instead of a cashier.

Within seconds, the young woman had finished processing my information. "You're all set, Ms. Richardson," she said as she returned my cards to me. "Dr. Keller's currently seeing another patient, but he'll be with you as soon as he's done."

I took a seat next to an end table with a pile of magazines sitting on top of it. There were so many varied topics to choose from that I didn't know where to start.

A father and his young son arrived a few minutes after we came in. The boy was in the middle of a coughing and sneezing fit, and his T-shirt was covered in dried snot. The father fished through his pockets to find a pack of tissues to appease the boy's cold, but only found some change and a crumpled-up ATM receipt. I saw a box of tissues on the bookshelf next to the table and handed a few to the boy, keeping my distance so that he could blow his nose into them.

"Th-thank you," he said, snorting and sniffling.

They sat down in the chairs on the other side of the lobby, away from everyone else to prevent the boy's cold from spreading. Soon afterward, another young woman arrived from the doctor's office area. Unlike the receptionist, she was dressed in plain clothes so I couldn't tell whether or not she worked there until I saw her St. Gabriel's pin.

"Ms. Richardson?" she called. "Dr. Keller's almost ready. Why don't you come on back?"

I followed the doctor's assistant into one of the offices and sat down on the medical chair in the center. The cushioning was nowhere near soft enough to offer adequate support, but it was the only thing in the room I could sit on. While the assistant measured my height, weight, and blood pressure, I felt something weird pulse through my right hand. I didn't know if it was from the blood pressure cuff squeezing on my arm, or my sudden nervousness about what other tests Dr. Keller had in store for me.

The assistant left me alone for a few minutes, so I closed my eyes and placed my left thumb on top of the wound in a vain attempt to make my hand whole again. If I had known any spells at the time, the first thing I would have done was try to find a way to get rid of that hole.

I quickly sat upright when I heard footsteps approaching the office. No one came in right away, making me even more nervous than before. The weird pulsating feeling returned briefly, but then it stopped just as Dr. Keller entered the office. He was pretty tall, like my dad - probably about six-foot-four. He wiped down one of the lenses of his glasses on his lab coat and then reached for the clipboard hanging from the wall to review my measurements.

"Welcome back, Deanna," he said warmly. "How is everything?"

"I ran into a bit of traffic on my way here," I told him, "but I'm fine otherwise."

"Good, good." He looked at me, and then he looked at his clipboard again, stroking his chin as if he hoped to find a beard there. "Let's see here… Vitals look normal. BP and heart rate are a bit elevated, but nothing to worry about yet. Tell me, Deanna: How often do you exercise?"

"Maybe a few times a week?" I didn't know what the doctor's question had to do with my hand, but I answered as truthfully as possible so that he wouldn't give me an incorrect diagnosis.

"You should try to get in at least thirty minutes a day if you can," he said, "even if it's something simple as a brisk walk around the block. It'll help you lose weight, and more importantly, it'll help you relax."

"Relax? How can you tell?"

The doctor didn't say anything right away. He just pointed to my right hand, which I didn't notice was twitching even after the blood pressure cuff had been removed.

"Oh… right," I said, rubbing my hands together.

"Let's take a closer look at that hand," he said. "Your father said you burned it or something. Is that correct?"

"It certainly  _ felt _ that way. I went home and tried to close my front door, and all of a sudden, my hand got red hot."

"Have you taken anything for it lately?"

"Some pain medicine and some lotion to stop the swelling, but that's about it."

"Are you able to squeeze it?" the doctor then asked. "Can you close your hand into a fist, like this?"

I watched him close both of his hands into fists and then did the same with my right hand. It was a lot less painful to do after taking some medicine, but it still felt awkward with the bandage on.

The doctor pulled a penlight out of his pocket and pointed it at me. "Now, I'll need you to take that bandage off for a moment," he said. "I want to make sure nothing's been permanently damaged."

I took off the bandage and held my right hand out, palm facing upward. The doctor looked down and swirled the light around my hand, paying extra attention to the hole in the middle. The loud, contemplative "Hmm" he gave as the light lingered on that spot did not reassure me one bit.

"On the bright side, it doesn't look like there's any damage to the skin," he said, "but I'm concerned about this area of your palm right here. Did you notice any strange markings on your hand after you touched that doorknob?"

That was one of many questions I never expected to hear in my lifetime. I knew doctors were trained to carry a serious demeanor at all times, but I couldn't believe how casual he was about asking something so odd. An astonished "Wait-wait-wait… what?" was all I could offer in response.

The doctor ordered me to look at where his light was shining. Inside the hole, I saw something that looked like a three-by-three grid of dots with a single, unbroken line zigzagging through them. It reminded me of a constellation or a pattern one drew when trying to unlock a cell phone. "It seems that the moment you touched the doorknob, it reacted to some sort of magical energy inside or around you and created this seal," he explained.

"Wait a minute… You've seen something like this before?" I asked.

"Over the years I've had a couple of patients come to me complaining about odd markings on their hands and fingers just like yours. Those who've seen them commonly refer to them as 'enchanter's signs' due to their connection with people coming in direct contact with magic crystals. The only difference between your case and the other ones I've seen is that their reactions weren't as… severe as this one."

"Did any of those marks light up like a night light? And will this part of my hand ever grow back?"

"To answer your questions in order," Dr. Keller said, "I haven't personally observed any glowing from any of the witch brands I've seen. The only thing I know is that they don't appear to be harmful. As for the wound on your hand, I think we'll need to do an X-ray scan before I can give you a definite answer. Whatever it is you touched left a pretty deep hole."

I expected him to say something like that, but it didn't make it any less annoying to know that I would be stuck with this wound and this weird symbol on my hand for quite some time.

Before I was allowed to leave, Dr. Keller checked my eyes, ears, and mouth for any side effects related to the crystal exposure. When he told me he didn't find anything out of the ordinary, I breathed a sigh of relief for the first time in days. He then wrote a note for me to return to his office next month for an X-ray to see how my hand was doing, and recommended that I wore a loose-fitting glove on it for protection. I could already feel the holes being drilled into my wallet.

"It looks like that's everything I can cover for now," he said as he opened the door. "Do you have any further questions, Deanna?"

"No, I think I'm good for now, Dr. Keller," I replied. "Thanks."

"You're welcome. Let me know if you experience any discomfort with that hand or anything else in the next few weeks - dizziness, fatigue, nausea, or anything like that, okay?"

"Sure thing. I hope it doesn't come to that, though."

I left Dr. Keller's office for the front desk to pay for my visit. The sick boy and his father were both gone, leaving Dad and the receptionist as the only ones in the lobby.

"Ready to go, sweetie?" Dad asked after tossing aside an issue of Reel Talk Weekly.

I walked with him back to the parking lot, showing him the note from Dr. Keller. The doctor took care not to write down anything related to my recently-discovered 'enchanter's sign', as the notion of me getting an X-ray was already shocking enough for both of us to comprehend.

"Why do they want to do an X-ray?" Dad asked. "Do they think you might have broken something?"

"I hope not," I said, rapidly opening and closing my hand. "My hand doesn't  _ feel _ broken. He did say that I should keep it covered, though."

"Does it still burn or sting?"

"No."

"Then you probably should lay off the bandages for a little while. We may still need them for later."

"I know, Dad," I grumbled, but I truly wanted to stop wearing those bandages and see if putting gloves on would be just as effective.

Dad turned the radio back to ECLS on the ride home. This time, I didn't pay much attention to the music, preferring to surf the internet on my cell phone to compare prices on lightweight fingerless gloves and search for information on that weird symbol on my hand.

A lot of the results I found on the latter topic confirmed the doctor's diagnosis and my own suspicions - that enchanter's signs were created when someone came into direct contact with a magic-generating device and allowed the magical energy from the device to flow through their body. This made the body more sensitive to pain, so one also had to "release" any excess energy from their body by touching a non-magical surface within a set time frame to return the body to normal. It would have been nice to have this information  _ before _ meeting Sol and essentially slamming my hand on two really hard surfaces and branding myself as a rancher would do to a cow, but it was a mistake that I wouldn't repeat - and hopefully wouldn't  _ need _ to repeat - ever again.

While it was nice to finally figure out how I got that strange mark, I still didn't know why I was able to gather energy for Sol's magic wand when she couldn't do it herself and I didn't have the sign at the time, or whether my shiny new enchanter's sign enabled me to start casting spells for real. I planned on asking those questions and more to Sol when I went over to Cherry's after lunch, knowing that I'd also have to gird myself in case she asked me a bunch of questions that I wasn't fully prepared to answer.


	4. Hand It Over

By the time I’d finished surfing the internet, Dad nudged me on the shoulder to let me know we made it back home. I didn’t have any ideas for a new painting, so the two of us sat downstairs and played along with a game show called _Questions from Mark_. He kept a score pad to gauge how well we did against the audience. Dad had 1,200 points, I had 1,050, and the contestant with the highest score had 1,500 going into the final round.

“Hey, Deanna,” he said during the commercial break. “Have you ever thought of going on one of these shows? I’d bet we could make a real killing!”

“Not really,” I replied. “I mean, you’re probably right, but we’d have to fly out to the west coast to even get into the audience, and we’d probably have to pay for our own airfare, room, and board.”

“Yeah, but if you made it all the way to the finals and won the grand prize, you’d make all that money back and then some.”

I thought for a moment about what I could do if I won the grand prize on _Questions from Mark_. Compared to other game shows like it, $5,000 was nothing, but even a small amount like that would probably equal what I would make from a year of selling paintings on the side. I could buy a nice used car with that kind of money – nothing super-fancy, just something to have so I wouldn’t need to rely on Dad driving me everywhere. I decided I would consider going if the opportunity ever came up, but I still thought it was unlikely that we would ever actually go.

After I ate some lunch, I went back upstairs to search for something to use to cover my hand. I saw a nice-looking pair of black fingerless gloves online, but it would take a couple of days for them to be delivered to the house. The gray gloves I kept in my dresser were good for keeping my hands warm but too heavy and conspicuous to wear for mild spring weather. The disposable vinyl gloves in the bathroom medicine cabinet were little better – they were too tight and sticky, and it was hard to look cool when you had to dangle a sweaty glove around after taking it off.

I went back to the first-aid kit for another bandage even though Dad told me not to mess with them. It was the least messy of my remaining options, for it was easier to replace a missing bandage than it was to replace a used roll of gauze tape. The wound didn’t really hurt that much anymore. The bandage was only there to conceal my sign from Sol until she asked about it.

I kicked my shoes off and took a nap on my bed for about an hour, relying on my phone’s alarm clock to wake me up. When I went back downstairs, I saw Dad crashed out on the couch with his feet up and his sneakers still on, something he and Mom used to frequently tell me not to do. He looked so comfortable resting there, though. It was probably the first nap he’d been allowed to take during the week in a long time.

“Dad? Dad, wake up,” I whispered. When that didn’t work, I tapped him on the shoulder a couple of times, and that got him to move. It took him about a minute to sit upright, but once he did, he sprang up from the couch as if he’d never fallen asleep.

“I’m ready when you are,” he said. “Just stick with me and you’ll be fine. Be prepared for anything.”

“Dad, I think you might be over-selling this just a little bit.”

Dad insisted on walking in front of me as we walked out the door and toward Cherry’s Consignments. I didn’t know what he expected to protect me from. Everyone around us appeared to be minding their own business, and no one struck me as particularly suspicious. Even so, I was in no mood to get involved in any fights. I just wanted to talk to Sol and figure out what was going on.

The store was a bit livelier than it was yesterday. About five other people were on the sales floor looking at the trinkets on the shelves, and Elias was at full attention, answering questions for a customer about a model castle he wanted to buy. I didn’t see Sol anywhere, so I looked around the store with Dad to kill time until she arrived.

“Is this where you sell your paintings, Deanna?” he asked.

“Yup,” I replied. “There’s mine right there.”

I pointed toward the shelf by the front window where my first painting was stored. There were two new paintings on the shelf directly below it – one was of a black-hooded man with half of his face framed in shadow, and the other was of a swarm of honey bees flying over an empty field of grass. Both looked scary, but I was more comfortable having the shadowy man’s portrait hanging over my bed than the painting with the bees on it.

I looked down at the clock on my phone. It was two minutes before two o’clock and Sol still hadn’t arrived yet. Was she in trouble? Or was she just waiting for it to hit exactly two o’clock before walking in so she could say she followed our agreement to the letter?

Dad stopped looking at the paintings for a moment and turned back to me. “I don’t think this store’s for me,” he said. “Everything in here costs more than I’m willing to spend. Are you sure your painting’s going to sell at the price you’re asking for it?”

“You always told me to aim high, Dad,” I said. “Whoever made these two paintings probably had the same idea.”

“Couldn’t you try talking those artists into bringing the price down a couple of bucks?”

“I would if I could, but I don’t think they’re here. Also, once the item is given to the store, it’s out of the seller’s hands. You’d have to ask… him?”

I looked toward the front counter expecting to see Elias, but a taller, fatter man had taken his place behind the register. I scratched my head for a second before walking up to the counter.

“Welcome to Cherry’s Consignments, where if you can spell it, we can sell it,” the man said, reciting the store’s motto in one breath as if he’d practiced it thousands of times before. “What can I do for you, young lady?”

“Good afternoon, sir,” I said. “Um… where did Elias go?”

“You’re looking for my son, huh?” The man let out a hearty laugh that could be heard halfway across the sales floor. “I’m afraid you just missed him.”

I didn’t see much of a family resemblance between the two men. Aside from a difference in age and weight, Elias’ face had thin lips and full cheekbones, while the man claiming to be his father had the opposite. Without Elias present to confirm the man’s assertion, I had no choice but to take him at his word for the moment.

“When is he coming back?”

“His shift’s over for the day,” the man said. “You a friend of his?”

“No, just a customer.”

“I see. Well, if there’s anything you can ask him, you can ask me. You can call me Mr. Cherry.”

“To tell the truth, Mr. Cherry,” I said, quickly straightening up once I realized I was talking to the owner of the store, “I just stopped by because I was supposed to meet someone else here around two o’clock. I’m still waiting for them to show up.”

“As long as you and this other person aren’t up to no good, I’ll let you stay.” Mr. Cherry leaned over the counter and lowered his voice almost to a stage whisper. “I’ve overheard a lot in my years working at this store and I try to stay out of people’s business unless they’re dealing directly with buying or selling. I’d prefer not to get the police involved if I can help it.”

“I promise you won’t have anything to worry about with me, sir.”

“Good, because I’d hate to have to discontinue a budding artist’s work for knowingly getting swept up in criminal activity.” He subtly jerked his head toward the window shelf where Dad was standing. Dad wasn’t looking at the paintings anymore, but it sounded like Mr. Cherry had figured out I was one of the painters. He probably overheard Dad say my name while we were looking at them. I didn’t really mind, but I was curious about what other interesting stories he’d heard from behind the counter. Before I could ask him about it, the front door opened and a familiar voice called out to me.

“Sorry…I’m…late…”

I spun around and saw Sol standing by the front door, hunched over and panting heavily. She managed to muster enough energy to lift her right hand and beckon to me. I walked over to Sol, taking long strides to get over to her as quickly as I could without bumping into anything.

“Is everything all right?” I asked.

“Shh! Keep it…down,” she huffed.

Suddenly, every eye in the room turned to us. I hadn’t said or done anything yet, but Mr. Cherry and the others looked at Sol and I like we were trying to steal something. Dad was the only one still looking at me after everyone else had returned to their business.

“I guess this must be your new friend,” he quipped.

“Yeah,” I said, leaving Sol alone for a moment to calm down and catch her breath.

Sol stood up and brushed some clumps of dirt from her jeans, and then looked up at Dad. “Who’s this?” she asked.

“Oh…that’s my father. He wanted to take a walk with me, so I brought him here to show him my painting.” I waited for Dad to give me a disapproving look for telling such a poor lie, but it never came. The part about the painting was true, but I only came up with that on the spot.

“Pleased to meet you,” Sol said to him. “I’m Marisol. Marisol Sheeran.”

“Hi, Marisol,” Dad said. “I’m sorry I can’t stick around to chat longer. I’ve never actually been in here before, so I just came here to browse.”

“Uh, okay. Deanna and I are just gonna hang out here for a bit. I mean, if that’s okay with you, that is.”

Sol stepped backward toward the front door, looking uncomfortable as Dad examined her to see if she was carrying her magic wand. He stopped when he caught a glimmer of golden light from her pocket.

“Sure,” Dad said hesitantly. “Try not to hurt yourselves, okay?”

Sol and I looked at each other and then nodded at Dad. “Yes, sir,” we said in unison.

“All right, then. Didi, I’m going to head back now. Call me if you need anything, okay?”

Without saying another word, Dad left the store and went home. Sol looked a lot more relaxed when she saw that no one else was watching her.

“Can we talk outside for a few moments, Deanna?” she asked.

“Don’t you want to look around first?”

Sol lowered her head and glared at me.

“Okay, okay, we’ll go outside,” I said, throwing up my hands and walking out the door.

* * *

 

A gentle breeze greeted me as I stepped outside, making me wish I’d remembered to wear a light jacket. Sol didn’t look the least bit cold despite also wearing a short-sleeved shirt. Once she got outside, she looked all around her to make sure no one else was listening in. I had to call her name and snap my fingers a couple of times to get her to stop and pay attention to me.

“Are you okay, Sol?” I asked. “You’re looking a bit rattled today.”

“I’m fine!” she said defensively. She was standing close enough to me that I could hear her breathing faster than normal.

“Did you… _run_ all the way over here just for our little meeting?”

“Not _all_ the way. I had to go to the store with my mom, and we didn’t get back until a little before two o’clock. I told her I had to ‘meet a friend uptown’, but she wouldn’t let me leave until I helped unload the groceries. That’s when I realized I was running late. I made it about three-quarters of the way here before tiring out.”

Considering the foot traffic and the distance between Cherry’s Consignments and Sol’s apartment, I was impressed that she was able to make it that far at top speed.

“Do you want to sit down somewhere?” I asked.

There were no benches nearby, so Sol propped herself up against an oak tree several feet away from the side of the store. Slowly, she slid onto the ground, her back grinding against the bark. The impact when she hit the grass nearly dislodged her wand from her pocket, forcing her to scramble to keep it from popping out.

“By the way,” Sol said, changing her mind and taking her wand out anyway, “this wand stopped working again. I don’t know what you did to it, but I can’t get it to cast any spells.”

“You can’t be serious!” I cried. “How could that thing still be broken? You saw me do that dance in the park yesterday. I know your wand works. It _has_ to work!”

I didn’t know that for certain. We didn’t take the time to test the wand out after I charged it. The only evidence I had that it worked at all was the energy meter on the side, which was still half full.

“Did you try casting anything after you left the park?” I asked.

“I tried shooting a magic missile at a pillow,” Sol replied.

“Did you try casting anything that _won’t_ potentially get you arrested?”

“What’s wrong with that? Magic missiles are one of the basic spells every good witch should know.”

“Yeah, but I think we should start out with something a lot less dangerous.”

I looked around for something Sol could test her wand on but found nothing but loose pebbles, discarded candy wrappers, and cigarette butts. As tempting as it was to watch Sol try to lift or burn a bundle of trash, even a simple feat like that felt like something best left to the local garbage collectors. On the other side of the street, I found a target that looked far more suitable for a test of a witch’s abilities.

“See that cone over there?” I asked, pointing to a tipped-over traffic cone nestled along the curb across the street. “Try standing it upright.”

“You mean with a levitation spell? Sounds simple enough.”

Sol got up from her resting spot behind the tree and pulled two items out of her right pocket – her magic wand, and a plain slip of paper.

“Is that a cheat sheet?” I asked, astonished that Sol would need such a thing in the first place. “How did you manage to get that information, anyway?”

“I didn’t have time to go back to the magic shop for a spellbook, so I looked up a couple of spells that looked easy to cast.”

Sol turned away from me and briefly looked at her paper before directing her attention toward the cone. The cone wasn’t very far away from us, but I could see her squint as she tried to focus on her target and her target alone. She shooed me away when I tried to get a better look at the motions she was making with her wand. A stroke here, a twist there, and a few forward thrusts for good measure. It looked simple enough for anyone to do, but the result was the same as before – nothing happened.

“That one didn’t count!” she shouted, pointing an accusatory finger at me. “I was distracted, that’s all.”

Sol took a step back from the cone and repeated the motions she made earlier. I kept quiet and stayed away from her to make absolutely sure there was nothing to distract her.

Sol ended her second attempt with a flourish by lifting her wand up in one swift, smooth motion. The traffic cone remained in its spot, unswayed by Sol’s attempt to lift it up.

“What’s going on?” she groaned. “I did it exactly like the paper said that time. Come on! Lift! _Lift_!”

Sol tried raising her wand higher and higher, but the cone stayed put. Saying the spell’s name out loud didn’t seem to improve her success rate. After another minute of waving and flailing and shouting, she finally gave up.

“Here… you try it,” she said, hanging her head low and passing her wand and cheat sheet to me like two unwanted birthday presents. “I bet you won’t get it to work, either.”

When I took Sol’s wand into my hand again, I felt the tingling sensation return to me, mostly concentrated in my right hand. Sol’s notes consisted of a bunch of arrows and single-word names, divided into their own sections by thicker lines. There were several different spells crammed into such a small space that there was no room for details on how they were supposed to work. The drawings looked like the sorts of things I used to scribble in my notebooks in high school, except these were slightly more legible.

I looked at the “Lift” spell, which was just a two-sided arrow pointing left and right, followed by an arrow pointing up. I pointed the wand at the cone across the street and visualized it rising upward as I raised my arm up. A vision was all it turned out to be, as the cone still refused to lift off the ground. Sol, who had been talking on her cell phone while I was doing this, chimed in on my failure.

“Told you so.”

I took a closer look at the cone’s position. Before, it was standing a few inches in front of a fire hydrant. After I cast my spell on it, the cone had moved a few inches behind the hydrant. It was hardly the awe-inspiring display either of us had hoped for, but I saw it as proof that there was something useful about the wand.

“Did you see that? It moved!” I cheered.

“So what?” Sol said. “I’ll bet the wind probably knocked it over. Besides, you told me you wanted to lift that traffic cone and stand it upright. I didn’t see it come off the ground, so either you messed up somewhere, or that wand is messed up.”

“It’s not messed up! I’ll prove it by lifting that cone for real. Just give me a minute.”

The tingling sensation in my hand got even stronger when I tried to use the wand. I had to let go of it for a moment to calm down so I didn’t mess up my next attempt. It looked like my palm was glowing, so I took off my bandage so I could get a better look at it.

It was my enchanter’s sign, and it appeared to be reacting to Sol’s magic wand. When I pulled the wand away, it went dark, but when I brought it closer, both the sign and the crystal shined brighter and brighter.

“Deanna, what are you doing?” Sol asked, looking at me as if I’d gone crazy.

“Nothing,” I said sheepishly.

When I grabbed the wand after taking my bandage off, I felt compelled to hold onto it as tightly as possible. I had to prove to Sol – and more importantly, to myself – that what I’d just done wasn’t a fluke.

After taking a moment to get a hold of myself, I squeezed the wand with all my might. I was going to make that traffic cone move, no matter what.

_Lift._

The name of the spell entered my head, but I didn’t know if saying it out loud was necessary to make it work. Even if it did, there was no guarantee that the wand would specifically respond to _my_ voice after I’d only used it twice. Not only that, but Sol and I were already drawing stares from confused onlookers. There was no need to make things weirder by shouting at inanimate objects.

I drew the pattern in the air with the wand while reciting the spell in my head over and over.

_Lift. Lift. Lift! Lift!_

After I finished the final upward motion, the gem on the end of the staff blinked a few times, and a small cluster of electricity started sparking around it. Sol and I gasped in awe at what we were seeing. I smiled and giggled for a few seconds, reveling in the fact that I was about to cast my first real magic spell. Sol’s own smile faded as the magical cluster around the wand started to grow unstable. She frantically pointed toward the cone, begging for me to do something before I lost control of my magic. To save both of us from getting zapped, I aimed the wand at my target and thrust it forward, and the energy around the crystal focused itself into a laser beam, striking the cone and covering it in a thin golden aura. I heard someone behind me shout “Whoa!”, but it didn’t sound like Sol’s voice. I wanted to see who it was, but I needed to stay focused on the cone and figure out how the Lift spell worked.

When I raised my hand to eye level, the cone lifted off the ground and stayed afloat, twisting and turning in midair.

“Oh my goodness… that was _awesome!_ ” Sol said. “I can’t believe that actually worked!”

“Me neither!” I replied.

“How high do you think you can lift it?”

“I don’t know. Let’s find out.”

I raised my hand above my head, lifting the cone up to the level of the telephone wires nearby. A small group of kids saw the floating cone and took pictures of it with their cell phones. One of the younger kids in the group looked up and hid behind one of the older ones.

“I think that’s high enough for now,” I said, lowering my arm and setting the traffic cone down gently onto the ground near the fire hydrant where it started. I relaxed my grip on the wand, causing the beam of light and the aura around the cone to fade away.

Suddenly, Sol grabbed me by the shoulders and spun me around, looking me in the eyes with the same excitement a kid would have after seeing their first fireworks display. “You have to tell me how you just did that! I need to know!”

“All I did was think of the spell in my head,” I told her, “go through the motions you drew on the paper, and that’s when the crystal lit up.”

“That’s what I _was_ doing, but it didn’t work for me. What else did you do?”

“No, really. That was it.”

“What about your hand? I saw you doing something–uh, could you hold on a sec?”

Sol’s question was interrupted by a faint buzzing sound. She stepped away from me and turned around to answer her phone.

“Oh! Hi, Mom… I’m still out with Deanna…  Yes, Mom… Yes… I did! Really… Okay, maybe I had some help… Deanna… What?! Mom, you can’t–“

I couldn’t hear what Sol’s mother was saying to her, but from the look on Sol’s face after she hung up the phone, I could tell that one of us was about to be in serious trouble.

“Well, it looks like I won’t be going home with this wand today,” she said.

“Huh? Why not?” I asked.

“My mom now knows that I can’t use this wand no matter how hard I try, so she told me to give it to you.”

“I couldn’t do that, Sol… You probably spent a lot of money on this. You should keep it.”

I tried to give the wand back to Sol, making sure not to point the crystal end toward her hand and accidentally brand her. She kept pushing it back toward me, and on the fifth or sixth push, she stopped and stared at my right hand.

“Wait a minute… Where’d that hole come from?”

I took a deep breath and braced myself. This was about to get really awkward.

“Remember when you first asked me to help charge this wand?” I asked.

“Yeah…”

“And you handed it to me gem-first?”

“Yeah… Oh… Ohhhhhh.”

I couldn’t help feeling uncomfortable watching Sol cringe when she put everything together. Just a few minutes ago, she was giddy about watching her magic wand cast actual magic. A combination of realizing she couldn’t use that magic herself, and that it was the result of an accident she had partially caused, appeared to have broken her. I felt even worse knowing that if I hadn’t been hasty in taking the wand from her at the park, she likely would have had a chance to claim that magic once she figured out how to do it. I didn’t know if she wanted to apologize for injuring me or punch me in the face for “stealing” something she believed to rightfully belong to her.

“Sol? Are you okay?” I asked, cautiously looking around to see if she would start crying.

“Should I be?” she asked back, only tilting her head up enough to look me in the eye.

“Listen… I know you were looking forward to using this magic wand. I didn’t mean to take that away from you. I just wanted to help you get it to work so that you could use it yourself.”                                 

Sol took a closer look at my hand to see my enchanter’s sign and sighed after looking at her own hands and seeing that she didn’t have one.

“Tell you what… I’ll see if I can help you get a new wand,” I said, “and maybe help you find a way to get a sign that isn’t as painful.”

“You’d really do that for me?” Sol asked. “You’re not mad at me for _zapping_ you or anything?”

“It was an accident. Neither of us knew that was going to happen. We’ll have to be a lot more careful with the next one, that’s all.”

“Yeah.”

I looked at my phone and saw that I’d missed a few text messages from Dad asking about my whereabouts. The sooner I responded to them, the less likely I was to get scolded when I got home.

Sol nudged me in the arm just as I sent a text to Dad telling him not to worry about me. “Sorry, Deanna, but I gotta run.”

“Me too,” I said. “I got so excited over the whole wand thing that I lost track of time. I have to work the next three days, so I won’t be able to come out for a while.”

“That’s okay. We can still keep in touch. What’s your number?”

After we exchanged phone numbers, I tried to stuff the magic wand into my left pants pocket. Trying to leave enough room to grab the wand without touching the crystal was tricky because it was so short, and keeping it from popping out as I walked was going to be trickier. I was going to need a lot of practice safely removing my new wand before I could think about learning any complex magic spells.

“One more question before I go,” I said. “Where did you get this thing, anyway?”

“A place called the Blank Scroll, on Coral Street,” Sol replied. “It’s right next to Bridge Pizza. You can’t miss it.”

“That’s a pretty odd place to put a magic shop, but I’ll keep it in mind. Thanks.”

The cone-peepers from across the street had long since stopped watching us. It was high time for me to follow their example and go home before anyone started asking questions. I felt lucky that Sol wasn’t mad at me for “stealing” her wand, but I worried about the lecture she was probably going to catch from her mother when she got home. Having that much on her mind over a long walk couldn’t be doing her any favors.

What were Mom and Dad going to say once they found Sol’s wand on me? I couldn’t sneak it past them; I didn’t have anything long enough to cover my pockets. The “brutally honest” approach wouldn’t completely get me out of trouble, but I figured I’d be even worse off if they discovered the wand and I tried to dance around the issue.

Now that I knew this magic wand worked, I was determined to figure out _how_ it worked. How many different spells were there? What could they potentially be used for? Why didn’t Sol get a spellbook for this stupid thing? Maybe I would get some answers by visiting this Blank Scroll place…if I had time to fit it into my schedule for the week.


	5. What Would Your Parents Think?

While I walked home, I wondered who else had witnessed my little floating cone show. The last time Sol and I tried the wand out, we were in a relatively quiet part of Emerson Park. There weren't as many good hiding spots along York Avenue, and we couldn't keep going back to the park every time we needed to recharge the wand or test a new spell.

Those kids were likely to share their photos and videos with their friends, who'd be more inclined than their parents to find my magic display "cool". Still, I needed to be careful not to overuse my newfound powers. A little notoriety for casting a harmless spell was one thing, but if something bad happened that couldn't easily be explained, like someone getting sick or dying under mysterious circumstances, then there was a good chance it would be blamed on "magic" or "witchcraft".

When I made it back home, I opened the front door with my left hand instead of my right. There was no danger of me burning my hand again, but I still didn't want to risk further injury.

"Dad? I'm home!"

It took Dad about a minute to come downstairs after I called for him.

"Oh… Hi, Didi," he said with a yawn.

"Sorry, Dad. I didn't mean to disturb you."

"No worries. I was just upstairs watching a movie. Almost put me right back to sleep."

If Dad really had been taking a nap before I arrived, he definitely wasn't after seeing a familiar gleam in my pocket. "What do you have there?" he asked.

"A magic wand," I said.

"I can see that." Dad's voice suddenly sharpened. "Where did you get it?"

My resolve had shaken a bit, but I answered Dad's question as confidently as I could. "Marisol gave it to me. She said she couldn't use it anymore."

"The same Marisol you were hanging out with earlier? The same Marisol whose wand nearly  _ wrecked _ your hand?"

I felt a bit of malice in Dad's voice whenever he mentioned Sol's name. He didn't sound ready to forgive her as easily as I did.

"It wasn't all her fault," I admitted. "I wanted to help her out and I grabbed the wrong part of the wand when she passed it to me, and  _ that's _ how I got hurt."

"If you know the wand is the reason you have that hole in your hand, then why are you still carrying it? You should give it back to Marisol and let her take care of it."

"I wanted to give it back to her, Dad, but she wouldn't take it."

"Do  _ you _ even know how to use that wand, Deanna?"

I heard Mom enter through the door behind me before I could answer. When I turned around to greet her, I saw that she was also looking down at the wand in my pocket. Now I was  _ really _ in for it.

"Deanna? Van? What's going on here?" she asked.

I sat down on the couch as Dad walked over to Mom's side. This was usually the time he went over to give her a kiss, but Mom walked in just as he started grilling me. A light intimate moment between the two would have made the situation even more awkward than it already was.

"Hi, Pam!" Dad said. "Our daughter was just telling me about her shiny new toy."

"Shiny new toy, you say?" Mom rested her chin on her right hand and gave me a playful look. "Funny you should mention that… I overheard someone talking about a couple of young ladies hanging out on York Avenue who were playing around with traffic cones and a 'shiny toy'. Did you see who they were, Deanna?"

News traveled around Sharonia a lot faster than I expected. Either those kids had already gone to the library by the time I was finished, or they already uploaded their pictures to the internet and Mom "just happened to find them".

It looked like Mom had forced me into a trap. I'd focused so much on explaining how I got my new magic wand without thinking about their reactions to me using it. Once again, lying was out of the question, as I had photo and video evidence working against me. I had no choice but to suck it up and admit my involvement.

"Technically, only one of us was playing around with it," I said.

Mom dropped her arm and her playful stare. "Which one?"

Bracing myself for a longer round of questions, I meekly answered, "It was me."

"What compelled you to use such a potentially dangerous object?"

"We weren't going to do anything dangerous with it. Marisol - the other girl who was with me - told me that her wand still didn't work, so she asked me to try it out. Picking up a cone was the safest thing I thought we could do."

"And you decided to do this where other children could see you because…?"

"There wasn't anyone around when we started! The kids didn't show up until later. We were just doing it for our own amusement."

"You're lucky no one tried to scare you or find some other way to break your concentration," Dad cut in. "If you'd lost control of that cone, you could have broken something! That certainly isn't amusing, and neither is having to spend a week's salary to fix a broken window, is it?"

I shook my head.

"I didn't think so."

"By the way," Mom said, "you haven't told me how your doctor's visit went. How is your hand doing?"

"It still feels fine," I said, opening and closing my right hand a few times, "but the doctor wants to take some X-rays on it just to be sure."

"May I see it?"

I showed Mom and Dad my hand, pointing out the markings from the enchanter's sign in the center of the hole. Mom recoiled at the sight, but Dad didn't look as disgusted by it.

"Wow! That wand did  _ this _ to you?" Mom asked. "I should tell you to get rid of that stupid thing, but I have no idea who you should give it to! Do this Marisol girl's parents know you have this wand?"

"I'm not sure what her dad thinks," I said, "but it was Sol's mom who told her to give it to me."

"Really?"

I nodded confidently.

Dad, confused by my story, looked at Mom and pulled her aside. "Could you excuse us for a moment? Don't go anywhere; we're not finished yet."

As they snuck toward the dining room, I discreetly leaned my head back while pretending to watch television, hoping to catch a snippet of their conversation. They must have noticed me trying to eavesdrop on them because they moved even faster toward the kitchen before I could get my head all the way up. I wished I could hear what they were saying from where I was sitting. All I could do until they came back was watch a rerun of  _ Starr Studded _ and wonder why I didn't remember half the jokes the first time I saw that episode a decade ago.

Mom and Dad returned to the living room after several minutes. I sensed them staring at me, so I quickly sat up straight to fully pay attention to what they were about to say.

Mom spoke first after taking a deep breath. "As much as your father and I object to you carrying that magic wand given the... _ unusual _ circumstances that led you to it…"

"We'll allow you to keep it for now," Dad added. "You've already demonstrated that you have some idea how to use it, and we know we can trust you to use it responsibly."

"And, let's face it - you're pretty much stuck with that thing anyway."

I scoffed at Mom's side comment, but I admitted she had a point. Since Sol couldn't use the wand even after I gave it back to her, there was little reason for me to believe anyone else could, either. Even if someone else found a way to unseal it for their own personal use, I wouldn't be able to stop them if they suddenly went on a killing spree, and I'd be in serious trouble if the wand could be traced back to me in any way. For better or worse, this magic wand was mine now.

When Mom and Dad tried to squeeze onto the couch on either side of me, I felt my new wand digging into my abdomen. There was no reason for me to keep it in my pocket any longer, so I stood up and pulled it out, pointing it toward the carpet to keep from accidentally casting a spell on anything.

They then took turns laying down a list of ground rules for me to follow if I was to continue to keep my wand. Most of the rules were pretty obvious, such as maintaining it regularly, keeping it secure from thieves, not using it to commit crimes, and not casting spells on anyone without their permission. They couldn't think of anything to say if I ever violated any of those rules. It seemed that public ridicule and possible jail time would be a harsher punishment than anything they could come up with.

Without anything further to say, Mom and Dad stood up again, each of them placing a hand on my shoulder and pressing down firmly as if they were trying to keep me rooted to the floor. "We know this is all new and exciting for you," Dad said, "but don't forget that magic can be dangerous and potentially deadly."

"Are you absolutely sure you want to go through with this?" Mom asked. "There isn't much either of us will be able to do if something bad happens to you…unless we somehow found enough free time to study this ourselves…"

Mom and Dad looked more worried than I'd ever seen them. Hearing them talk about me risking my life was intimidating, but I knew I had to say something to reassure them.

"Don't worry, you guys," I said as I tried to put on my bravest face. "There's still a lot I don't know about this wand yet, and I won't stop until I figure it all out. After all, you guys told me how important it was for me to see something all the way through, right?"

Dad relaxed his grip on my right shoulder, only to slap down on it even harder and say, "That's my girl!"

"Hey, she's my girl too, you know!" Mom said, pulling me in for a hug and rubbing the shoulder Dad just slapped. She then whispered in my ear, saying, "Just promise me that you won't skimp on your artwork or your regular work for this, okay?"

"Yes, Mom," I replied.

"Good. It's going to be a little while before dinner, so why don't you go and find a safe place for that wand for the time being?"

I nodded, gave Mom and Dad a big hug, and went back upstairs to my room.

All of the drawers in my room were filled with clothes, pencils, pens, paints, and other art supplies. There was no real "safe" place for me to store my wand, as anything I tried to hide could easily be found by someone rummaging through every drawer and door until they found what they needed. The best fit I could think of for it was in the top drawer of my art desk where I kept all of my colored pencils. I wished Sharonia High had woodshop classes so I could have learned to craft my own safe or secret compartment.

My painting of Sol holding the wand above her head was still on the easel facing my bed, reminding me of what could have been. I originally planned to try to sell it for some extra cash, but after everything that happened in the last day or so, I was tempted to scrap it and do another one like it with myself as the focus, eventually asking Sol to pose for a newer, better painting once she got a wand of her own.

Another wave of inspiration hit me as I took a closer look at the sign on my right hand. The drawer to my art desk was closed, but the markings still gave off a faint golden glow, allowing me to see each dot and line in vivid detail. I had no idea how I was going to incorporate it into a painting, or even why I wanted to take a picture of it. Morbid curiosity? Irrefutable evidence of my newly-obtained witch-hood? Surely the wand in my drawer would be proof enough for most people, but I couldn't carry it with me everywhere I went. Either way, going to work the next day was going to be awkward. I hoped my new gloves would arrive in the mail soon...


	6. The Curious Cobalt-Cloaked Customer

Dinner came a little later than usual. Dad realized he forgot to defrost the steaks, so we ended up ordering a pepperoni-and-mushroom pizza from Rococo's. I was surprised by how well the two toppings went together considering how much space the pepperoni took up.

I was eager to continue practicing with my new magic wand, but I couldn't take it outside because the sun had just recently set. It looked like there was still enough energy left in it to cast a lot of the quick-fire spells written on Sol's cheat sheet.

I took the tiny scrap of paper out of my pocket again to remind myself how to use the Lift spell. I tried casting it on a few random items in my room: my sneakers, my wastebasket, and the rug in front of my bed. All of them were pretty lightweight objects, so I could pick them up and set them down easily. I thought it would be just as easy to try to lift my bed, but it felt the same as trying to move it around by hand - very, very heavy. The front end got maybe two inches off the ground before landing with a muffled "thump". It seemed that even with a device that could potentially lift anything I wanted, I was still limited by my own strength.

"Deanna? What are you doing in there?" Mom shouted.

"Just cleaning my room!" I shouted back.

"Could you clean it a little more quietly? Your father and I are going to go to bed soon."

"Sorry!"

All that lifting had made my room messier than when I started. I hurried to put everything back in its place in case Mom or Dad came in to check on me.

I didn't have time to look at all of the other spells on the cheat sheet, so I picked two that didn't look like they would make a lot of noise: "Heat" and "Chill". The patterns for each of those were as simple as they sounded: draw a thermometer in the air, and then raise or lower the magic wand accordingly.

To test each spell out, I used my sneakers as targets again. My left sneaker was nice and toasty after I tried to warm it, but my right sneaker didn't feel much cooler after I tried to cool it. I couldn't think of any real good uses for either spell. That would require a lot more testing and note-taking, two things I didn't really have much time to do. I was tired, and I wanted to wake up and go to work with a clear head.

* * *

 

The next morning greeted me with a steady downpour of rain. After I changed into my work clothes and walked downstairs, I saw that Mom and Dad were in a hurry to get out of the house and into the car. Did I really sleep that long?

"Mom? Dad?" I asked as they went to grab the only umbrella in the house. "Can I take that with me?"

Dad opened the blinds to one of the windows in the living room, showing the rain forming small puddles on the sidewalk. "I think you can get by with a raincoat and some boots for today, sweetie," he said. "I'm still waiting for you to recover the last one you left behind."

"Dad!"

"Come on, honey," Mom said. "I think she needs it a bit more than we do right now."

"All right, then how about this?" Dad reached into his pocket and handed me a ten-dollar bill. "We'll split the cost. I'll give you some money to buy your umbrella and today's newspaper. Sound good?"

If this was Dad's roundabout way of disciplining me for leaving my umbrella behind at work, then I wasn't sure what kind of lesson I was supposed to learn from it.

After Mom and Dad hugged me and went on their way, I picked up a few strips of the leftover bacon from the plate next to the stove. Once again, I had the house to myself for a little while, but not enough time to sit down and enjoy it. According to the weather report, the rain was expected to last throughout the morning and afternoon, so I needed to move as quickly as possible to avoid getting soaked.

* * *

Ada's was only a ten-minute walk from my house, but the rain and the traffic made it feel twice as long. I was surprised that nobody got splashed with grimy road water with all of the puddles lying around.

When I stepped through the sliding doors, I immediately went to dry my raincoat off by standing on one corner of the welcome mat for about a minute, away from the floor tiling so it wouldn't be necessary to lay down a "Caution: Wet Floor" sign. Despite the weather, the store was already quite busy. Four of the eight registers were staffed with cashiers, and customers weaved in and out of the aisles with shopping carts and baskets in hand. It was easy to get lost on days with big crowds, as I once did well before I was old enough to start working. Fortunately, the two items I needed were stored close to the registers, so I wasn't at risk for clocking in late.

I snuck into the express checkout line where Corey Emerson was stationed. Corey had been working at Ada's for almost two years, and he helped show me the ropes when I first started out. We were about the same age, but we didn't hang out a lot outside of work because he lived in Marble Borough, which was a twenty-minute drive to the south from Sharonia. He was a pretty big guy, so he didn't need to sit in the stools that the rest of the registers had. Surprisingly, I never heard him complain about having to stand on his feet all day.

"Hey, Corey!" I said when it was my turn to approach the register.

Corey took a break for wiping his glasses on his shirt to look up at me. "Deanna! You made it!" he said. "Uh... shouldn't you be behind the register right now?"

"Yeah, I know. I needed to get a few things for Some, so I'm doing it now instead of wasting time on my break."

"All right, I'll try to be quick. You don't want Sybil to catch you out of position."

I stood by and watched Corey ring up and bag my items. It was easy to do both at once when you only had to deal with customers with small orders. On the regular registers, it often took a team of two - cashiers like Corey and baggers like me - to make sure everything got put away safely and swiftly. I had almost two seasons' worth of experience with bagging, and I felt like I was almost ready to take the lead and run the register. I heard it didn't pay that much more than bagging, but people tended to pay a lot more attention to you.

I took my bag and my raincoat into the employee room behind the general service counter. The coat rack didn't have any name labels on the hooks since workers seemed to come and go every few weeks, so we were allowed to use any hook we wanted. I hung my belongings on the leftmost hook so I could get a good look at the shift schedule. It looked like I was originally going to be paired with Randy, but his name was scribbled out on the sheet, with Ken Dunlap's name written in pencil above it. Ken and I didn't get along very well, but I figured Sybil must have had a good reason to pair us together.

When I took my position at register number three, Ken pulled his stool back so I could clock in. "You're late," he said.

"No, I'm not," I retorted, showing him a receipt as proof that I clocked in right at nine o'clock. He simply took the small scrap of paper and tossed it in the wastebasket at his feet.

"Oh...my mistake. Let's get started then, shall we?"

Ken sat down on his stool and swiveled back toward the conveyor belt, occasionally rocking back and forth to let his legs dangle when the line thinned out. He seemed to be fully focused on the customers, as any attempt I made to make small talk with him was rebuffed with a dismissive finger pointed at the bag carousel. I spent the first hour of my shift in relative silence, only exchanging a few thank-yous with customers for bagging their groceries. I kept wishing Randy hadn't injured his ankle so I had someone to chat with to make the day go by faster.

At around ten-thirty, when the rain was at its heaviest, a young woman with silky brown hair and brown eyes approached our register with some boxes of cereal, milk, eggs, and a few different types of packaged meat. She was wearing a cobalt-blue hooded cloak that didn't have a drop of rain on it. I immediately wondered how that was possible since she didn't appear to be carrying any kind of umbrella with her, and I felt like I needed to say something about it.

"Hi, there!" I said in my cheeriest ready-to-make-a-sales-pitch voice. I had never seen this woman before and didn't know her name, but I didn't let that stop me.

"Hello," she said back.

"Were you able to find everything you were looking for?"

The woman smiled and nodded. "Yes, I did. Thank you."

I turned around and looked out the window, not realizing I was about to squash her loaf of whole grain bread underneath a large rack of pork ribs. She loudly cleared her throat, prompting me to apologize and move the ribs to a different bag.

"You know, it's pretty rainy out there today," I said. "May I interest you in an umbrella? They're right over there."

The young woman looked at the umbrella rack near the entrance where I was pointing, and then shook her head. "No thanks. I think I'll be fine. I'm not in a big hurry, but I don't know if I should get back in line just for an umbrella, you know?"

Corey's line had grown to six customers since the last time I looked over. If I sent this woman over to the express lane, it would probably add another fifteen minutes to her time in the store. By then, the rain probably would have slowed down to the point that she wouldn't need the umbrella anymore.

When I finished bagging the woman's groceries, she tilted her head to the right and said the same quiet "Hmm…" I heard from Dr. Keller during my examination. It didn't look like she was checking on the safety of her bread. I couldn't tell what she was staring at, but I didn't want to draw unwanted attention to the register by saying anything. She quickly looked back up, thanked me and Ken for our service, and left the store without saying another word.

"What was _that_ all about?" Ken asked.

Of course… The one time Ken wanted to try to start a conversation with me, and I couldn't think of anything to say.

Our next customer was a young man wearing a coat that looked like it had more pockets than he had fingers. Just as we got halfway through ringing him up, he pointed out the window and asked, "Hey, what's that over there?"

It was a classic distraction prank: someone pointed behind another person, and when the victim turned around to look - most likely finding nothing - the prankster would disappear, usually after taking something valuable or delivering a sucker punch. The ploy and the setup were so obvious, but just about everyone fell for it eventually. The guy behind him was staring out the window, as well - they were low enough for anyone to see through without standing on their tiptoes.

I didn't want Ken to get on my case about getting distracted by two consecutive customers, so I waited for him to take the first look to see if this guy wasn't just trying to pull a fast one on us. Ken quickly turned around after catching a glimpse of what was happening outside, just in time to catch the guy in the jacket about to swipe a handful of sticks of gum from the rack. If I hadn't kept my eye on him, it was possible that he would have succeeded in stuffing the gum into one of his pockets.

I couldn't dismiss the possibility of Jacket Guy telling the truth about something weird happening. Ken was now watching him more closely than before, so I had a brief moment to peek out the window and find out what they were staring at.

It was that weird blue-cloaked woman I waited on earlier.

As she walked down the street away from Ada's, the rain seemed to bounce off an invisible barrier around her like the windshield of a car. That bubble, or aura, or... _something_ seemed to have the same effect on anything and anyone she crossed. There was no doubt in my mind that she was using magic to keep herself dry, but she was too far away for me to see what kind of magic wand she was using, or if she even had a magic wand at all.

There was a brief lull in our line after we finished serving Jacket Guy and the guy standing behind him. I rarely ever left my position behind the bag carousel unless I needed to use the bathroom or Sybil called on me to help someone else, but I just couldn't keep quiet about what I'd seen.

"You... _saw_ that, right?" I murmured to Ken, trying to disguise my astonishment from the other clerks. "I'm not going crazy, am I?"

"You mean the girl with the cloak? Yeah," he said back. "Guess she didn't need that umbrella after all."

"No kidding. I want to know how she did that! Did you see her do anything before she walked out into the rain?"

"Nope. Why do you ask?"

Ken gave me a suspicious look that basically said, "I already know the answer to that." Maybe I should have been more careful about my choice of follow-up questions.

* * *

When my lunch break came around, I went straight to the break room. I wanted to buy a candy bar or a bag of chips to go with the lunch I packed, but Sybil always warned us that any time spent on the floor looking for food would count against our time. I never understood why she put that rule in place. Even if you had enough foresight to "reserve" your snacks ahead of time, not even the fastest of clerks would get in and out of line without losing at least a few minutes of their break.

I didn't remember where my old umbrella was. The last place I saw it was under the table. Whoever had it now would certainly be a little bit drier.

It didn't look like the rain was ready to let up any time soon. There was no way Randy was going to make it out here and risk getting injured again, so I sent a quick text message asking how he was doing.

"Fine, but not dandy," he responded. "You?"

"As good as good can be right now," I said, and left it at that. I wanted to hold off on telling Randy about my hand, or Sol, or the cloaked woman until the next time I saw him in person. I didn't know if he had any experience with anything magic-related, so I wanted to personally see the look on his face if he didn't.

The next few hours went by pretty quickly. Compared to Jacket Guy and Blue Cloak Lady, the rest of our customers were relatively normal, and none of them gave us any trouble. The rain still hadn't cleared up when it was time for me to leave, but at least this time I could use my new umbrella to protect me from the worst of it.

When I reached the front door to my house, I heard loud jazz music playing over the living room speakers. I thought Mom had come home from work, but she wasn't in the living room when I entered. Dad had the vacuum cleaner running in the living room and dining room, and was using Mom's CDs to drown out the noise. The only problem was that when he turned the vacuum cleaner off, the music was still blasting through the speakers loud enough for the neighbors to hear. I had to hurry over and turn the volume down so we could hear each other talk.

"Hey there, Didi," Dad said as he snapped the vacuum cleaner upright. "Did everything go okay at work?"

"Pretty much, yeah." I snuck a glimpse of the front page of the newspaper before handing the bag to him. Most of the time, the paper would lead with a big story about some arrest following a robbery or murder around town that missed the evening news, or the latest update on one of Sharonia High's sports teams. There was nothing like that this time around. It must have been a slow news day.

"Thanks." Dad smiled and tucked the paper under his arm. "I hope you didn't have too much trouble getting to work with all the rain."

"It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be," I said.

I was reminded again how casually Blue Cloak Lady walked to and from Ada's without getting a single drop of rain on her. Whatever she used to create that aura was more advanced than any spell I currently knew. I could learn a lot from that woman - or at the very least, someone like her. At the same time, I wondered if she would have freaked out if she had to go to the store without an umbrella or that rain-blocking spell.

"How's your hand doing?" Dad asked as he went to unplug the vacuum cleaner from the dining room wall socket.

"Fine...I think." I hadn't really thought about the condition of my hand since I went to work. The hole was still there and wasn't going to go away, as far as I knew. It didn't hurt anymore, anyway.

"That's good to hear. Are you okay with steak and mashed potatoes for dinner tonight?"

"Sure," I said half-heartedly. I preferred baked potatoes to mashed potatoes, but Dad's cooking was so good that I'd even eat foods I didn't normally like if I knew he made them.

It was almost time for another episode of _Questions from Mark_. This time, it was just me against the audience as Dad went to the kitchen to make dinner. I racked up points quickly without worrying about Dad interrupting me, which took away half the fun of watching the show. I tried to get Mom to join in after she came home from the library, but she wasn't interested.

After the show ended, I went upstairs to change out of my work uniform and get my sketchbook and bundle of colored pencils so I could work on some drawings outside of my room for once. I discarded the notion of trying to make something interesting out of my hand symbols. Blue Cloak Lady was a far more compelling subject. Unlike with Sol, I couldn't stop what I was doing to snap a cell phone picture of her to use as a base. I had to rely on my own fuzzy memory of her appearance, which made for a more stylized, but inaccurate, sketch that I eventually grew to like.

I turned around to see Mom standing behind the sofa and staring over my shoulders, and my heart almost skipped a beat.

"Sorry, Didi," she said. "I rarely get to see you working on your art because you've always got your door closed. This one looks nice. Who's she supposed to be?"

"Someone I saw at work today," I said, holding up the picture for Mom.

Mom looked at the sketch for a few moments from a few different angles. "You met another witch? Did she actually use magic in the store?"

My eyes popped wide open. I didn't know how Mom made that leap of logic. "No, no...she did that outside," I said with a nervous chuckle.

"That explains the rain, I guess."

After going upstairs to put my new sketch in a folder by my art desk, I sat down next to Mom to watch the news while Dad continued to cook. Midway through one of the first commercial breaks, I stopped to send an enthusiastic text to Sol: "You'll never guess who I saw today!"

She responded about two minutes later. "Sorry, can't talk right now. In class."

I didn't want to be responsible for Sol getting in trouble again, so I held off on any further texts until after dinner. If there was anyone I knew who might be interested in hearing about other witches in the area, she was my first - and admittedly, only - choice.


	7. A Different Angle

Once the steaks were ready, Dad called us to the dinner table to join hands in prayer. It was customary for us to pray silently when we were the only ones eating, and pray out loud whenever Grandpa Rupert, Grandma Shenelle, or Uncle Lamont and Aunt Monica came to visit. However, we hadn't eaten dinner with anyone in our extended family since the last Dawn Festival, so Mom blessed the table on their behalf.

Mom prodded me to tell Dad about the woman in the blue cloak. She told me it was because they were interested in hearing about my work day, but I thought I was because they didn't have anything interesting to say about their own work days this time. There was little I could tell Dad about Blue Cloak Lady other than her appearance and her unusual ability to defy the day's weather report.

"Is this girl some kind of storm chaser or something?" Dad asked. "She's probably gonna wake up with one hell of a cold tomorrow."

"I think she'll be fine," I said.

I continued to eat my steak by cutting it up into portions small enough to fit on my fork. Each bite I took felt even juicier this way. I really needed to figure out this secret and steal it from him.

Dad let me help him wash the dishes after we were done. There was something weird about watching some of the soapy sink water pool into my right hand. I expected it to have some kind of reaction to my hand doodles, but nothing seemed to happen.

After drying my hands off, I went back upstairs to continue practicing lifting, heating and cooling random objects in my room until I had a good idea how to do each gesture without looking at Sol's sheet first. I started taking notes of my own using a blank notebook I stored on my bookshelf. Perhaps drawing sketches of the spells in action was going overboard a bit, but I found that visual depictions just seemed to work better for me than trying to read blocks of text.

I waited for a few more hours until I was sure Sol was finished with her class before calling her back.

"Hello?" Sol answered the phone with a muted sigh. At least I knew she was still awake.

"Hey, it's me, Deanna," I said. "You okay over there, Sol?"

"Just tired, that's all."

"Class got you worn out, huh?"

There was a short pause, and then another sigh. I imagined Sol drooping her head and nodding.

"What kind of class are you taking?" I asked. "Creative writing? Woodworking? Computer training?"

"Dance class."

That would have been my next guess. It probably should have been my first, considering how we met.

"That's good. Why so late at night, though?"

"It's the only time I could get an instructor," Sol said. "She only works on Wednesdays and Fridays, so I can at least get some time off to practice on my own. The only downside is that the classes are really long."

I knew the feeling. I had never taken night classes in college, but whenever I got assigned to a night shift at work, it always felt twice as long as my day shifts, even when it wasn't. I wouldn't even bother hanging out downstairs when I was done - I'd just rush to my bedroom, take off my uniform, and go to bed.

"Anyway, you said you saw someone at work today, right? Who was it?"

I rolled over on my stomach to make myself comfortable. Not that it made any difference, since Sol couldn't see what I was doing. "I think I spotted another witch."

"Really?" Sol's voice perked up almost instantly. "What did she look like?"

"She had brown hair, brown eyes, and this blue cloak that might actually have been a raincoat, but I couldn't tell because it never got wet. She didn't look very tall...maybe an inch or two taller than me, and a few inches taller than you. If I had to guess how old she was, I'd say she was in her late 20's, or early 30's."

"Wait a minute… Did you say you saw a woman in a blue cloak?"

"Yeah," I said, bracing myself for a startling revelation.

"I think I may have seen her before," Sol said. "No, wait… I _did_ see her before! I'm sure of it!"

Sol told me that on the day she visited the Blank Scroll, she saw Blue Cloak Lady at the counter purchasing a wand just like the one she eventually bought, except it had a light blue crystal instead of a golden one. The woman also bought a hardcover book that was about half the size of a notebook and had a picture of a cluster of stars on the front cover. She and the cashier appeared to be very chummy with one another, and he even let her leaf through the book before buying it to make sure none of the pages were missing.

"I thought you said these wands didn't come with manuals, Sol," I reminded her.

"I'm not lying!" she insisted. "That witch girl had to pay for the wand and the book separately. From the look of it, I think she paid almost 200 dollars for the set."

"200 dollars?! I barely spend a fraction of that on my art supplies every month! It's no wonder you only bought the wand."

"I thought that was all I needed. After I bought it, I asked the guy behind the counter how to power it up, and that's when he told me about the dance."

"And he didn't tell you that you had to touch the crystal _before_ you did the dance?"

"Nope."

I needed to have a talk with this Blank Scroll proprietor and ask him why he withheld such crucial information.

"Hey, Sol, what's the rest of your week look like?" I asked.

"I'm free tomorrow, but I have another dance class Friday night," she replied. "Why? You want to go somewhere?"

"Yeah. I get paid on Friday, so I'd like to go down to the Scroll and help you get your wand. Will you be available this weekend?"

"I think so."

"Great! Hope to see you soon. Bye!"

I forgot to tell Sol that I didn't know exactly where Coral Street was. I figured she wouldn't care since it was easy for me to look on a map for the store's rough location. Unfortunately, getting to the Blank Scroll meant having to go back toward St. Gabriel. At least the fastest route wouldn't force me to take the highway and crawl through traffic. Either way, I felt as if I'd be better off learning how to fly or teleport there and save myself a lot of frustration.

As excited as I was about visiting a real magic shop for the first time, I had to stop for a moment and think about everything I just said. Magic, witches, crystals, and scrolls - all of it sounded like it came straight out of some old fantasy cartoon or movie. And here I was not only witnessing it, but living it! _I_ was one of those witches. _I_ was the one with the sparkly magic wand. And soon, _I_ was going to enter a shop with a name that sounded like it belonged on a tavern sign. If I tried to explain all of this to one of my past selves, she would probably look at me like I was speaking a foreign language.

I tried to force myself not to dwell on it any longer. I was getting tired, and there was work for me to do the next morning.

* * *

I slowly got up from bed a little after six o'clock, wishing that my day would be totally normal. No magic, no witches, and no other weird supernatural stuff. I needed a break. 

Mom and Dad were still asleep, so I tiptoed downstairs to eat breakfast and try to read part of one of the military thrillers Dad bought at a flea market last summer. I don't know if I ever saw him read any of those books before. Each one had to be at least five hundred pages long, maybe even more. It looked like it would take a full season's worth of continuous reading just to get halfway through. At least the aircraft carrier on the spine made it look nice on the bookshelf.

Dad was the next to come downstairs, with Mom following closely behind. It felt like the best time to ask one of them to take me out to Coral Street while they were still energized and in a relatively good mood.

But I couldn't do it. It was too soon. I promised myself my day was going to be normal and I was going to stick to it.

I joined them in the living room while they ate their breakfast bagels and watched the morning news, but didn't say anything about my plans. I couldn't even look at my hands without being reminded of my witch-hood. One was faintly glowing, and the other was sweating. And now my mother was staring. Wonderful.

"Didi, honey? Is everything okay?" Mom asked.

"Yeah, Mom, I'm fine!" I said, perhaps a bit too quickly to quell any suspicion to the contrary.

Mom leaned over to her left side and wrapped her arm around me, pulling me in for a quick cuddle. For a moment, I felt a little bit of my anxiety melt away. "If there's anything you need to ask from us, don't be afraid to let us know. But make it quick… Your father and I have to leave for work soon."

And just like that, it came creeping back.

"Uh… Is it okay if I tell you guys after work?" I asked.

"Why not now?" Dad countered. "We're right here."

"It's really not that important."

Dad shrugged. "All right, if you say so."

They finished their bagels at around the same time. Mom went to the kitchen to wash their dishes while Dad checked the mirror to brush his hair and fix the collar on his shirt. I waited for him to finish so that I could look at my own hair in the mirror. I felt like I was long overdue for a haircut. Either that, or get some curls.

By the time I was done brushing my own hair, Mom and Dad were ready to head out. "Have a good day at work, Didi," they said as we gathered for a group hug.

"I'll try," was all I could say in response. Saying "I will" would have implied there was no way anything could go wrong. There was always a chance I'd have to deal with some dissatisfied customer or an annoying co-worker, or worse. Fortunately, moments like that were rare where I worked, or at least it looked that way since there were so many customers. I was going to give it my best effort regardless.

* * *

 

Just before I headed off to work, I looked up at the sky to see if I'd need my umbrella again. Some of the clouds were fluffy and white, and others were loosely formed clusters of gray, with occasional bits of light blue peeking out. I didn't know which side would eventually win out, and I doubted that even the sky knew what it wanted to do, either. I figured it was better to stay prepared and have nothing happen over hoping it would stay dry when I went in to work, only for the rain to come back in full force in the afternoon.

When I went to the break room to put my jacket and lunch down, I saw my shift manager, Sybil Armstead, writing something on the scheduling sheet.

"Good morning, boss," I said as I sat down in one of the chairs.

Sybil was used to most of us either calling her "boss" or "Sybil". I didn't feel comfortable addressing her by her first name because she was a few years older than my mother. I made the mistake of calling her "Miss Armstead" after I first got hired, and she wouldn't let me hear the end of it for the rest of the day. She turned around to acknowledge me, but she didn't smile or frown. All I saw was a look of cold indifference on her face. Sybil was only about an inch taller than me, but I still noticed how her shoulders drooped as she looked my way. "Hi, Deanna," she said, the words not so much coming out of her mouth as dribbling out of it and spilling onto the carpet.

"Is everything okay? Did you sleep well last night?"

"I don't really want to talk about it."

Rather than risk getting punished for criticizing my boss' sleeping habits, I tried to steer the conversation on-topic by pointing to my name on the scheduling board, which had been scribbled out from the register logs.

"By the way, Deanna," Sybil said, picking herself up slightly, "I'm moving you to shelf duty today."

I nodded quietly. It seemed like harmless enough work - unpack pallets and put newly-arrived products on the shelves while taking down anything that was damaged or outdated. If nothing else, it would give me a chance to get some much-needed exercise.

"I noticed you were a little out of sorts yesterday," she added. "Do you mind telling me what it was outside that you found so interesting that you nearly turned your back on a shoplifter?"

How'd she find out about that?! I didn't see her anywhere near the registers. Did Ken squeal on me? No...he couldn't have. That would have implicated him, as well. _He_ looked first, after all. The security camera footage would prove it.

What was I supposed to tell her? That there really _was_ a lady out there who walked through a rainstorm without getting wet, and the would-be thief was probably as surprised as everybody else when he saw it? There was no way she would buy that!

"Anyway, I'm only switching you over for a couple of days. You can go back to bagging next week once you've got your focus back. Understood?"

I took a deep breath and sighed. If I exhaled any further, I feared I might melt. "Yes, boss," I said with my remaining breath.

"Great. You can start in aisle six and work your way up from there. Don't let me down, Deanna."

* * *

 

I tried to straighten myself up after I left the break room. It wasn't that I was intimidated by Sybil. I didn't want to look tired in front of her or the customers when I really wasn't. It was bad for business - theirs _and_ mine.

There was a pallet full of boxes of cereal waiting for me in aisle six. Cereal had a pretty long shelf life compared to a lot of goods in the store, so there wasn't much for me to put in the basket for outdated products. The hardest and most tedious part was getting the new cereals behind the rest of the ones in each stack. Pushing and pulling everything into place felt like unnecessary busywork.

The next aisle over was the pet care aisle. It was full of large, heavy bags of dog and cat food, with the occasional can of bird seed or fish food for variety. The newer bags were bound together by a few thick layers of cellophane. I had to use my hands instead of the store-issued box cutters to remove the cellophane to avoid ripping any of the bags open and spilling food or cat litter all over the place.

I took another deep breath and continued my work, moving past the greeting card section and entering the laundry and cleaning goods section. I felt like I was doing good so far, but it was getting harder to concentrate on my work with the strong fragrances coming from all of the detergents. I had to step away from the aisle for a few minutes to get some fresh air before going back to work, taking shallow breaths and moving as quickly as possible to get everything done before moving on.

While I was working, I noticed that nobody approached me to ask for help or strike up a conversation. I knew the store pretty well and would have been happy to direct any customers to where they wanted to go. Sybil didn't come by to check on me, so I could only guess how much more work I needed to do before I was finished. I couldn't even get in touch with Randy or Sol on my lunch break because they were both busy with other things.

By the time the second half of my shift started, I had grown accustomed to working on my own. The shopping traffic was much less dense on the floor than at the checkout lines, which meant there were fewer opportunities for distractions. I hadn't completely forgotten about the Jacket Guy incident, but it didn't weigh very heavily on my mind throughout the day.

I began thinking about my reassignment less as a punishment and more as an opportunity to once again see the store as the customers saw it - merchandise first, checkout lanes last. If everything was organized properly and people like me remained focused on our jobs as clerks, then more customers would be inclined to shop at Ada's.

When my shift was almost over, I got called into Sybil's second-floor office, which I had to enter through an "Employees Only" door next to the break room. She was looking out one of the one-way mirrors along the front wall, giving her a good view of most of the store floor. It was much easier for her to see everything going on through those mirrors than it was to review the security camera footage from the monitors on her desk. As I approached the mirror wall, Sybil turned to me and cracked a half-smile. She looked like she had life in her again. "Impressive, isn't it?" she asked.

"Yeah," I mumbled. "Do you wonder if anyone can see you from up here?"

"You probably could, if you stared hard enough."

Sybil walked over to her desk and pulled out a green padded chair. Judging by the sound she made when she sat in it, it couldn't have been very comfortable.

"Anyway," she said, squirming as she tried to sit upright, "I wanted to commend you on a job well done. You kept your focus, and you got all of your aisles looking nice."

"Thanks, boss," I replied. "Does this mean I'll get to go back to bagging tomorrow?"

"Weren't you listening to me earlier, Deanna?"

At that moment, I thought Sybil was going to jump back out of her seat, but she merely raised her right hand in protest. "Just because you had one good shift doesn't mean I'm going to put you back on bagging duty right away," she said. "You're going to have to step outside your comfort zone every once in a while if you want to grow."

"Is that why you paired me with Ken yesterday instead of, say...Corey?" I asked.

"Sort of. I wouldn't have done it if Randy hadn't hurt himself."

I started wondering if Sybil had given Ken a similar pep talk, or was planning to do so at some point. I couldn't see him anywhere from behind the mirrors, so I figured she must have given him the day off.

When I left Sybil's office, the crowd had thinned out a bit. The other cashiers braced themselves for the after-school rush that usually followed.

As if right on cue, a few yards after I stepped out of the store, I brushed past a group of schoolchildren on their way to Ada's and the nearby Dollar Shack, chatting among themselves about buying some candy and packs of trading cards. I only had a few dollars left in my wallet after buying my new umbrella, which was just barely enough to buy a bag of potato chips, but not much else. It didn't feel like it was worth it to stand in line just for that, so I went straight home.

* * *

 

Dad hadn't returned from work yet, so it was up to me to retrieve the handfuls of letters from our mailbox. Most of them were bills, but one of the letters - the only one addressed to me - was from Cherry's Consignments. I was so excited to open it up that I almost forgot about the small package wedged between the front door and the screen door.

Tucking the package and the mail underneath my arm, I unlocked the door and dumped all of the letters on the table, keeping the Cherry's letter for myself. I wasted little time tearing the envelope open with my key, fully confident that I knew what was inside - a check for thirty-seven dollars and fifty cents for selling my painting of "The Sword". It even came with a small postcard signed by Mr. Cherry and his son congratulating me on my first sale, which I thought was a nice touch. Sadly, I couldn't write my own thank-you note to the person who bought the painting because the buyer's contact information wasn't included on the receipt that came with the check.

I turned my attention to the package, which was also addressed to me. I had a feeling I knew what was inside this one as well, but Dad came in before I could open it.

"Hey, Didi!" he said, muttering something else too quiet for me to hear as he saw the pile of bills on the table. "How'd your day at work go?"

"Good," I said. It was technically true in that nothing _bad_ happened at work. It was a perfectly ordinary day, just as I had hoped. "But not as good as when I got this!"

I held the check up and stretched it a couple of times to show Dad that it was real. It seemed silly to get excited over a couple of dollars when I was only a day away from receiving a paycheck from Ada's that regularly paid a lot more money than the Cherry's check, but I couldn't help myself. "I got my first commission check today!" I sang.

"That's awesome, sweetie!" Dad said. "You should do more like that one. I'm sure the Cherrys would love to see more of your work."

"I'm thinking about it, but I haven't decided what I'm going to paint next. I just need a little more time."

Dad tore through the pile of mail one letter at a time, tossing aside anything that vaguely looked like a subscription or donation appeal. I thought one or two of them had my name on them, but there were so many letters that I couldn't tell for sure.

When I opened the package containing the black gloves I ordered, I didn't get the same rush of excitement that I felt when I opened the Cherry's check - just the satisfaction that they'd arrived on time and felt comfortable on my hands. It was the first time I'd consciously thought about my witch powers since leaving for work. Discovering a new hobby was cool and all, but I just didn't want it to be _all_ I talked about after discovering it.

I waited for Dad to run the junk mail pile through a paper shredder before approaching him with my question. "Dad… Can I go to Coral Street this weekend?"

"Coral Street? Why do you want to go all the way out there?"

"Well, Marisol told me about this shop, see," I said, my voice fluttering like a butterfly. "She says it's got all of these different kinds of magic things there, and I just wanted to go and take a look around, you know?"

"Oh. Well, if that's all you wanted, you could have told me this morning," he said. "We can go scope it out if you want."

"Thanks, Dad!"

When Mom came in, I told her the good news about my check. She also seemed keen about the idea of going up to Coral Street, mainly because she had never visited that part of town before.

"Don't you want to go and visit the bank first?" she asked. "That check won't do you any good sitting there on the coffee table like that."

I quickly picked up the check, folded it up and stuffed it in my pocket, pretending that was my plan all along.


	8. Nondescript

I spent a little bit of time after dinner practicing and refining the few spells that I'd learned so that I had something to talk about when I visited the Blank Scroll. Sol's notes had a couple more interesting tricks written on them, such as how to throw one’s voice or create artificial light sources. I had a little fun with the first one, which the notes referred to as “Echo”. So far, it was the only one that required me to talk directly to the wand.

I tried whispering innocuous-sounding messages like “Good night, guys” or “I'm in here” and watching as Mom and Dad checked the closets and drawers in confusion. Neither of them found it as amusing as I did, but at least I had a good idea of its potential uses other than playing pranks on people. I thought the other spell, “Glow”, would be useful as a night light, but it only seemed to work for me while I had the wand in my hands. A bit of a waste, really.

Friday was payday, which got me all excited. It meant having to go through another round of lonely shelf duty at Ada's, but at least I knew I'd have some money in my bank account when the day was over to make it all worthwhile.

My wand was starting to run low on energy, so I went outside into my backyard after dinner to try to charge it. There wasn’t a whole lot of room for me to dance around because our backyard was such a small, fenced-off area, so I had to resort to flailing my arms around again. Thankfully, I didn't need to spin myself dizzy like I did last time.

I looked down at my feet and saw that the grass I was standing in had gone from a lush, deep green to a sickly shade of brown. Somehow, Mom’s hyacinth garden and the concrete steps leading back into the kitchen remained undamaged.

“Didi? What are you doing outside this late?” Mom asked. She opened one of the windows to her bedroom and looked down at me, surprised. “And what was with that weird light?”

“Uh…what light?” I asked back. “I was just testing out something with my wand. I didn't see any light.”

“Oh. Well, why don't you come inside now? I don't want you to hurt yourself.”

I looked around and wondered if our neighbors had noticed what I just did, and then headed back inside to turn in for the night.

I put my wand away in its usual spot near my art supplies. Before I went to sleep, I wondered if I needed to take it with me to the Blank Scroll. It would have been nice to have some sort of protective case so that I didn't need to carry it in my pocket all the time. Then again, doing that would add an extra step to the unveiling process, making it both annoying and inconvenient if I needed to cast a spell in an emergency.

Before I knew it, morning had dawned. I had to get up and stretch for a few minutes to get the soreness out of my back. After a quick shower and change into a beige ruffled blouse and khakis, I headed downstairs to prepare some pancakes for breakfast.

I turned the living room television on to the morning news, knowing it would be the first thing Mom or Dad would turn to once they got up. It was hard for me to keep my excitement up when I was listening to stories about shootings happening around central and southern Sharonia early in the morning. At least two police barricades appeared to be set up along one of the most direct paths to the Blank Scroll, including one on Lord Avenue, one of the town’s busiest streets. I almost wanted to call Sol and postpone the trip until things were a bit safer.

After the first set of pancakes were finished, I called Mom and Dad down to eat. We all gathered in the living room to watch the news and try not to make a mess on the couch. I gave them a brief rundown of what they missed while I was sleeping, only saying enough to let them know we would need to take the long way to Coral Street.

“So where do you want to go first, Didi?” Dad asked. “The store? The bank?”

“Let's go to the bank first,” I said. “That way we can hit both stops in one trip.”

“Van, do you even know how to get up to Coral Street?” Mom asked.

“How hard could it be?” he replied, puffing his chest out a bit. “It's up there around Route 113, isn't it? Didi and I have already been up that way.”

I pulled out my cell phone and began to write a text message. “Let me get in touch with Marisol. She's been up there before. She could help us get there.”

“Your friend’s coming, too?”

“I don't know. I'll find out in a few minutes, I guess.”

I finished writing my text to Sol, asking her to stop at my house before we left. She agreed, saying she'd need about half an hour to prepare before she made it here. I went back to my room to retrieve my wallet, my jacket, and my magic wand. In the unlikely event that one of the shooters was still on the loose and camping out around northwest Sharonia, I wanted to be prepared in case we got attacked.

I spent some time reviewing my new magic sketchbook while I waited for Sol to show up. It was still a bit disorganized since all I was doing was expanding on the notes Sol gave me. The next time I got some free time, I planned on adding some more notations to make things easier to understand.

A car horn sounded from outside my front window. I looked outside and saw Sol get out of the passenger side of a teal sedan a few cars ahead of ours. An older woman with short, curly hair and a leaf-green jacket stepped out of the driver's side. She must have been Sol's mother. I waved down toward them to get their attention, and then dashed downstairs before Mom or Dad could tell me the obvious.

Mom reached the door first and greeted Sol and her mother with handshakes.

“Hello! I don't believe we've met yet. Marisol, was it?”

Sol scanned the room for a fraction of a second, and then looked up at Mom. “Yes, ma'am.”

“It's nice to meet you both. I hope you didn't have too much trouble getting here.”

Sol's mother stepped forward, lowering her purse to avoid hitting Sol in the face with it. “No, it was no trouble at all. I'm Lydia, by the way.”

“And I'm Pam. Would you and Marisol like something to eat before we go? Deanna made some pancakes.”

“We're fine, thanks.”

Mom called Dad out to the living room to talk with Lydia, giving Sol an opportunity to slip away.

“Can I use your bathroom for a few minutes?” she asked me.

“Sure,” I said, directing her upstairs.

Lydia turned her attention to me and approached slowly. I couldn’t help feeling a little bit intimidated. Maybe it was because I'd only heard of her from a one-sided phone conversation. I hoped she wouldn't go as hard on me as it sounded like she did with Sol that day. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss—”

“You can just call me Lydia,” she said, pressing her hands softly against mine. “We’re all adults here, right?”

“Yes, of course… I mean…”

Lydia cracked a half-smile. I had a sinking feeling she was getting a kick out of me making a fool of myself in front of everyone. Mom and Dad had taken the other seats in the living room, so I had no choice but to stand up and face them all.

“Tell me a little bit about yourself, Deanna,” Lydia said.

I told her about my part-time job at Ada’s, as well as some of the paintings I worked on in my spare time. I didn’t tell her about my painting of Sol because I wanted to keep it a surprise until Sol saw it first.

Sol certainly seemed to be taking her sweet time in the bathroom, so I excused myself to go upstairs to check on her. “Is everything okay?” I asked.

Sol slowly opened the bathroom door with one of the hand towels. Her hands and face were dripping wet, so she quickly picked up another hand towel to dry them off. “Yeah. What's up?”

“I want to show you something really quick. Come take a look at this!”

I led Sol toward my bedroom and directed her attention to the painting on the easel.

“Was this what you said you were working on earlier?” she asked, her eyes fluttering up and down as she tried to take everything in. “Is that supposed to be _me_?”

“Yeah,” I admitted. “I wasn’t sure what you'd think about it if I hadn’t, uh… _asked_ for your permission to paint a picture of you. I actually thought of scrapping it and starting over after you got a real, working magic wand.”

“Scrap it? Why? It looks great!” Sol moved closer to the painting and reached out to lightly brush her fingers against it. “Okay, so maybe I'm a little bit biased because it's a picture of me, but I really like it! The colors, the pose, the way the light radiates off the wand… The only thing I’d change about it—”

Sol’s suggestion was cut off by her mother calling us from the living room.

“Girls! We’re getting ready to go!”

“We're on our way!” we both shouted.

I checked my wallet one more time to make sure I still had my commission check, and then took my jacket and raced back downstairs to meet everyone.

* * *

 

Dad told Sol and her mother to follow us while we stopped at Pond's Bank, after which he agreed to let them take the lead on the way to the Blank Scroll. The line inside the bank was unbelievably long, even for a weekend, so I decided to deposit my check in the ATM just outside so I could get it over with and move on. Having to wait an extra day for my funds to be added was a small price to pay.

After that, it was on to the magic shop. Dad honked twice to signal for Lydia to leave the parking lot first and guide us to our destination.

We had little trouble keeping pace with Lydia's car. She seemed to know the streets of Sharonia pretty well, as we were able to avoid most of the traffic along the way. Things got a bit tense as she drove up close to the first police blockade on Third Street and paused for about a minute to gawk.

“What's she doing?” Dad wondered. He honked his horn again to try to get Lydia's attention. I turned around and saw about seven cars line up behind us, with their drivers honking _their_ horns and shouting for us to move. Lydia eventually got the hint, and we were on our way again.

Our path led us past the site of the old Matrix arcade, which had slowly converted to a pool hall over the last year. It was close enough to the town center to still get a lot of traffic, even though there were a lot of kids still sore about no longer being able to go there without an adult present.

The second barricade was another mile north along Lord Avenue. This time, Lydia didn't loiter around for long, choosing instead to weave her way through the residential district to try to hit as few traffic lights as possible. I thought I saw someone wave in our direction along the way, but I couldn't tell which one of us they were waving at.

After what felt like another half hour of driving, we eventually reached Coral Street. Bridge Pizza was only the first in a long line of stores on the block, which included a grocery store, a barbershop, a cell phone store, an auto repair shop, a dentist’s office, and an arts and crafts store. I looked around on both sides of the street but couldn’t find the entrance to the Blank Scroll anywhere, let alone anything even hinting at its existence.

We parked our cars in front of the dentist’s office and fed some change to the nearby parking meter. Sol jumped out of her car and ran toward Bridge Pizza, pointing to something next to one of the pizza place’s windows. “Deanna! This way!” she shouted.

“Marisol, slow down!” her mother said. The rest of us casually walked up to where Sol was pointing, not ready or willing to spend extra energy just to look at a wall.

Sol was actually directing our attention to a single door wedged between Bridge Pizza and Scarecrow Grocery. The door had a stock parchment scroll painted on the window, with no text written on, above, or below it. The only indication that it was part of the shopping center was a sign detailing its hours of operation.

“‘Can’t miss it’, huh?” I said, holding back the urge to scoff.

Sol looked back at me with her eyes darting back and forth. “Okay, so _maybe_ I exaggerated the ‘can’t miss it’ part just a little bit.”

Dad peered around the scroll painting, hoping to see some sign of activity inside. The lights appeared to be on, so the store was definitely open, but that was all I could see from where I was standing. “How did you guys find this place, anyway?” he asked.

“Well, me and my mom went to visit my brother and decided to do some shopping while we were out,” Sol replied. “On our way back to the car, I spotted this door and asked Mom if we could go inside to see what they had.”

When Dad opened the door, we followed him to a narrow corridor with a staircase to our right and a door to the left on the far side. The candle-shaped wall sconces and the marble wallpaper gave the impression of walking through the hallways of my old high school. Mom, Dad and I all started walking toward the door on the far end, but Sol pointed up the stairs and told us to follow her that way.

“Yeah, I got confused by that the first time, too,” Sol continued. “I’m not sure what’s behind that door down there, but we should probably leave that alone for now. Come on, guys!”

There was another door at the top of the stairs, and a uniformed officer standing off to the right of it. His belt was loaded with tools that he looked ready to use at a moment’s notice – a gun and handcuffs on his right hip, a baton and walkie-talkie on his left hip, and a device that looked like my magic wand somewhere in the middle. With so much weighing him down, I found it a minor miracle that he was able to stand upright.

“Welcome to the Blank Scroll,” the guard said. “Hold still for a moment, please.”

Everyone jumped when he reached for the wand on his belt and started scribbling a series of symbols in the air. Was he really going to attack us before we even set foot in the store?

A few seconds later, his wand glowed light blue, like the lights on the pens some cashiers used to detect counterfeit bank notes. He waved it over each of us and allowed us to pass when he was confident that we weren't carrying anything dangerous. Mom went in first, with Dad following closely behind her.

When it was my turn to be scanned, the guard's wand changed color from light blue to rose pink when it detected the wand in my jacket pocket. When I asked why he also needed to scan my hands, he just pointed to a sign on the other side of the door that read “No Unsigned Magical Items Allowed. No Other Weapons Allowed.” I showed the guard the mark on my right hand, and after he asked me to grab the wand to prove I really owned it, he let me join everyone else inside. I shuddered when I thought about what would have happened if I had tried to take the wand into the store _without_ having this sign.

The inside of the Blank Scroll proper was almost as sparsely decorated as the hallway and stairway outside. The walls were painted off-white and the floor was lined with a thin beige carpet. There were no paintings or self-portraits hanging from the walls like the ones I'd occasionally see at Cherry's. What the Blank Scroll lacked in atmosphere, it made up for with its wide variety of products. I saw stands lined with jars of herbs, powders, and liquids of many different colors, labeled with names I’d never seen or heard before. The bookshelves on the left side of the room were filled with books regarding potion recipes, spell components, magic wand maintenance, and creating charm necklaces using jewels and other household objects. Rows of magic wands were stored behind the front counter, kept in a protective case so no one would try to steal them.

Seeing so many unusual artifacts in one place was enough to make me giggle with excitement. One of the other customers gave me a funny look, but I continued to browse the merchandise to see what else I might consider buying if I ever came back.

Something about this place made me feel uneasy, though. Maybe it was the armed guard outside. Maybe it was something in the air that made me sneeze every few seconds. Or maybe it was the curly-haired man in a robe standing only a few inches behind me while I was browsing the book selection.

“May I help you find something?”


	9. Thorny Issue

Of the many lessons I learned from Sybil and the other managers at Ada’s, always making yourself available to help others was at the top of the priority list. The other important lesson was to give the customers enough space to find what they were looking for and let them come to you if they had any questions. This guy, whoever he was, was clearly violating both of those rules. When I turned around, he was standing so close to me that I could almost see every individual hair on his mustache.

Not wanting to be rude or knock down the bookshelf behind me, I stepped to my left to put a bit of space between us.

"Actually…" I started to say before another sneeze came on.

The man went to his front counter and ripped off two sheets of brown paper towel and handed them to me to blow in. The towels were rough on my nose, but it was certainly better than using my arm as a tissue.

"As I was saying… Is there a way you could open a window or a vent or something? It’s kinda stuffy in here."

The man gestured toward another young man in a polo shirt with the store's logo over his right breast and ordered him to flick a switch along the wall near the corner window, causing several ceiling vents to open up and circulate fresh air into the room. I took a deep breath and tried to soak it all up, but a few stray dust particles got into my throat and made me cough. No ventilation system was perfect, and I figured that was as good as things were going to get, being on the second floor of a shopping building at all. Complaining about it any further was just going to be a waste of time.

"Okay, what else do you want?" he asked quickly.

"I’d like to buy a magic wand, please."

"May I see your ID card first?"

I followed the man to the front counter and gave him my photo ID card. He couldn't verify the information right away because the other worker was at the register, ringing up Lydia for a jar of reddish-orange powder labeled "dragon's breath" and an accompanying recipe book. From the name alone, I imagined she was going to try to make something hot and spicy with it when she got home, hoping her and Sol's taste buds could handle it.

While the clerk checked my ID, I took a closer look at the wands on the wall behind him. A few of them had the same citrine gemstones on them as the one in my pocket, and others were tipped with garnet, amethyst, aquamarine, and other precious stones. I couldn't decide which one I wanted to get for Sol. I assumed that they all could cast the same spells with the same intensity and efficiency, and that picking the "right" wand was simply a matter of personal preference.

"Looks like your record’s clean. That’s good," the clerk said. "Now, let me see your hands."

I was afraid someone was going to ask me that eventually.

After taking a deep breath, I removed my gloves and showed my enchanter’s sign to the clerk. Even though he wasn’t touching my hands, I could feel the hole in my palm tingling again.

"What in the— How in the world did you get that?"

The moment the clerk saw the hole in my hand, he jumped back a few inches, almost bumping into the wands behind him.

"It was an accident," I said. It didn’t do much to calm him down.

"What would you need a second wand for? Wouldn’t you much rather have one of our fine jewelcrafting kits?" he begged. "You could turn a nice profit with them! Plus, they’re not that expensive…or dangerous."

"No thanks. I'd just like to buy one of your wands, if you don't mind. I promised a friend I'd buy one for her."

"Is this ‘friend’ of yours with you right now? I want to make sure these wands don’t fall into the wrong hands before I sell them."

I spotted Sol standing by the bookshelves and asked her to join me at the counter. She had a thin book tucked under her arm entitled  _ Charms, Chants, and Cantrips: Simple Spells for Aspiring Wizards and Witches _ .

"Check this out, Deanna!" she said as she flipped to the middle of the book to show me a picture of the basic "Lift" spell. "I recognize some of the spells in this book from my notes. Do you think you could pick this up, too?"

"In a minute, Sol," I said to her.

Sol plopped the book on the counter, and it landed loudly enough to get the clerk's attention. The two glared and frowned at each other, exchanging tense greetings. I was ready to continue my line of questioning, but Sol beat me to what I was about to ask next.

"Um, why didn’t you tell me about needing to touch a wand's crystal before I could use it?" she asked.

"You didn’t ask," he replied.

"Yeah, I did."

"You only asked me how to charge the wand. You never asked me what you needed to do to activate it. Two totally different things. From the look of your friend's hand, it seems she figured that part out before you did."

Sol gritted her teeth and massaged her temple with her left hand. "Don't remind me."

"However," the clerk said, turning his attention back to me, "it looks like you went overboard here. All you had to do was press or grip lightly on your crystal. See this?"

The man laid his right hand on the counter with his palm facing upward, showing us an orange flame symbol nestled underneath his index and middle fingers. "This is what an enchanter's sign  _ should _ look like when applied properly," he continued.

I was amazed by the detail in the line work on the man's sign. Considering how much pain I was in after getting jabbed by my wand and my doorknob and only coming away with some small dots and lines, I could only imagine that getting a shape that complex tattooed on his hand must have hurt like hell…or worse.

There was something else unusual about the sign, other than its unnaturally smooth shape. Something shiny and pink appeared to be pulsing around it, like highlights or shading on a picture. Mine was too small for me to clearly notice any change in color. I could see it in the wands behind him, too. What did it mean? What was causing it?

I went to check my pocket to see if my wand was having the same reaction, but the clerk got agitated and pointed a finger at me. "Hey-hey-hey-hey! Put your hands where I can see them," he ordered.

Realizing my mistake, I quickly apologized and put both of my hands on the counter to show him that I wasn't trying to hurt anyone. Whether or not I actually  _ could _ was a different story.

Just then, I heard someone rattling a paper bag right behind me.

"Hey, Dustin! I got some extra beef jerky from the store. Want some?"

It was a bit early for lunch, but the thought of a quick snack was making me hungry. I dug into my pocket again – the one with my wallet, not my wand – and turned around, holding out hope that the holder of the bag had enough jerky for three or more.

It turned out to be the same blue cloak-wearing woman I saw at Ada's the other day. She wore it a bit more loosely this time on account of it only being partially cloudy outside. Only the top button under her hood was buttoned, revealing a light blue halter top and matching skirt that fell just beyond her knees.

"Yeah, sure. Just set it over there somewhere," the clerk said, pointing to the other side of his register.

Blue Cloak Lady dropped off a pair of strips of beef jerky from her bag before turning her attention to me and Sol. "You look familiar," she said, scanning us the same way the guard outside did, except without a metal- and crystal-detecting wand. Curious, Sol looked back at the woman and pointed to herself while asking "Me?" without saying it out loud.

"Not you," the woman added. "I meant your friend here."

"Oh, right!" I said, awkwardly chuckling when I realized she  _ did _ recognize me. "I remember you. How were the ribs?"

"Delicious! Probably the best set I've had in years. I can't say the same for the bread, though."

Was she still sore about that? I couldn't tell. She didn't frown much when she brought the subject up after raving about her ribs.

"What's she talking about?" Sol whispered to me.

"It's a bit of an embarrassing story," I said quietly. "I'd rather not talk about it."

Our parents appeared ready to leave, with Lydia looking like she was getting the most impatient. "Marisol! Are you almost done?" she called.

"Just give us a few more minutes, Mom!" Sol shouted.

"All right, but hurry up! The meters are still running!"

I didn't notice Mom or Dad putting any money into any parking meters before we came in, but Sol’s mother had a point. I'd allowed myself to get sidetracked for too long. It was time for us to get what we came for and get out before our cars got ticketed.

"Quick, Sol…which one do you want?" I asked.

It only took a few seconds for Sol to settle on the amethyst wand furthest to the right behind Dustin.

"Could you give me two cases, too?" I asked him just as he was about to take the wand down from the wall shelf. The spellbook on the counter, coupled with the wand and the two protective cases I just bought, cost more than I was willing to spend on this trip, but Sol and I needed to study from real books if we were going to make any progress as witches. I slid a second copy of the  _ Simple Spells _ book onto the counter, knowing I would have burned through more than half my paycheck until the money from my commission got credited to my account.

"Anything else?" he asked.

Sol grabbed the bag with her wand in it as I paid for my order. "Nope! I think we're good for now," she said with a smile.

"All right, then. You girls take care now. Try not to hurt yourselves again."

Despite Dustin’s dismissive tone, I thanked him for his service. If I didn’t have to travel so far from home to buy all this stuff, I’d come here more often.

As we were about to leave, Blue Cloak Lady looked back in our direction, first at our bags, and then at my right hand again. "I knew it!" she said, slamming her left hand against her right palm.

I scrambled to put my glove back on to cover up my sign. "Knew what?"

"That you had one of these." The woman held her left hand out and gave me a close-up of her index and middle fingers, which had a zigzag pattern on them just like the one on my palm for some reason. One part of me was excited to confirm my own suspicion of her being a witch. Another part wondered what would happen if she ever needed to be fingerprinted. Would her enchanter’s sign show up on the prints, too?

"No need to be embarrassed," she assured me. "It's nice to see someone else around here with such dedication to learning about magic."

Was  _ that _ why she was looking at me sideways at Ada's the other day? Not because I almost messed up her groceries?

"It didn't really start out that way," I admitted. "I was walking down to Emerson Park one day and I sort of wandered into it. Marisol here was the one who helped me get started."

I gave Sol a few taps on the back as she dug into her bag to check out her new belongings. She looked up at the woman in the blue cloak and stood to full attention for a moment, and then relaxed a bit.

"Is that so?" the woman asked.

Sol and I both nodded.

"In that case, if you've got some time, why not go and find yourself a tutor? There's only so much you can learn from reading textbooks alone."

To our surprise, she reached into her pocket and handed each of us a card with her picture and contact information on it. Inside the fancy woven border, the card read:

LILLIAN SILVERTHORNE, INSTRUCTOR

SILVERTHORNE SCHOOL OF ARCANE ARTISTRY

COMPREHENSIVE LESSONS, FLEXIBLE SCHEDULING

I was surprised that this Lillian lady was already teaching magic at such a young age, and even had her own school! Most of the teachers and professors I knew were already well into adulthood. She must have spent a lot of time studying and practicing to make it this far.

"Are you offering to teach us?" I asked.

"Only if you think you can handle it," she said. "Think it over and call me if you're interested, and we can set something up."

"Will I eventually get to learn how to do that bubble thing?"

Lillian blinked rapidly, as if a bug had flown into her eye. "Wait…you  _ saw _ that?"

"How could I have missed it? I mean, it  _ was _ a pretty big bubble."

"Oh… You know, it took me a while to get that spell just right. If we get to it at all, it'll probably be an intermediate or advanced lesson."

Our conversation was cut short by Dad calling for us from the entrance. "Deanna! Marisol! You guys almost done?"

"Yeah, Dad! We’ll be right there!"

I turned back to Lillian, nodded, and said, "Sorry…we should probably get going. It was nice meeting you again."

"Same here. See ya!"

Suddenly, the jerky in Lillian's bag was shoved to the furthest recesses of my mind. The business card she gave me was far more valuable than any snack I could have bought off her.

* * *

 

When we got back to the car, the first thing I did was put my wand inside my new case, which looked like a cross between a jewel case and a miniature suitcase. It was still too big for me to put in my pocket, but at least the hook on the outside was sturdy enough to hang off my pants without getting knocked off.

As for my new spellbook, it didn't look anything like the one Sol said Lillian bought the first time she saw her. All this one had on the cover was the title – no fancy pictures, fonts, or borders. It didn't even tell me who wrote the book. Maybe you were only allowed to get the fancy books after taking some classes. Who knows?

This time, Dad took the lead and guided Lydia back to our house. We still had to go around the same police blockades, but there wasn’t much to look at on the way. There were only one or two squad cars left in each area. It might have been safe to ride through again, but we weren’t willing to risk it.

"Hey, Didi," Dad said, still looking forward so that he could focus on the road. "Who was that woman you were talking to in the store?"

"Oh! Uh, she was the one I met at Ada’s a couple of days ago," I said.

"You mean the one in the blue cloak?" Mom asked.

"Yeah! That’s the one."

"What were you two talking about over there?" Dad asked.

I held up Lillian’s business card so that it was slightly visible in the rear-view mirror. "Something about a magic school of hers."

Mom took the card and examined it for a few seconds before giving it back to me. "Was she trying to recruit you or something?"

"I think it was more of a suggestion than anything else, really. She didn’t have time to discuss the finer details."

"Are you sure you want to pay more money to go back to school?" Dad asked. "I mean, you just got your certificate from art school not too long ago, and we're still trying to pay off your student loans. Besides, how are you going to find time to fit this new hobby into your schedule? Between you selling your paintings at Cherry's and working at Ada’s part-time, there's only so much you can do with your time in a week."

"I'm still trying to figure it out. I haven’t even decided if I want to go to this school yet."

"We just don't want you to burn yourself out, Didi. Maybe once you sleep on it, you'll know whether or not you still want to go. If you do, good. If not, that's fine, too. If this Lillian Silverthorne is a reputable teacher or mentor or whatever, I'm sure she'll be considerate enough not to hold it against you if you decide not to go."

"I sure hope so," I said, sighing and looking at Lillian’s card one more time before putting it in my wallet.

* * *

 

When we all got back to the house, I started to get hungry again, so I made myself a tuna fish sandwich. Sol sat down at the dining room table and skimmed through her copy of  _ Simple Spells _ , not saying a word and only occasionally looking up to see if anyone else was watching her. We didn't know how much longer she and Lydia planned to stay, so Mom offered them both something to eat.

"Do you have any tomatoes?" Lydia asked as she followed Mom into the kitchen. "I just got a great idea for a recipe."

"I think I might have a few," Mom said. "Marisol, do you want anything to take home with you?"

"Some cookies, I guess," Marisol replied.

"I have some oatmeal raisin cookies here. Is that okay?"

"Yeah, that’ll do."

I sat down next to Sol and watched her eyes dart back and forth as she continued to read her spellbook. I hadn't seen anyone so engrossed in a textbook before, even in high school or art college.

"So, did you do it yet?" I asked.

"Do what?"

"You know…'get signed'." I demonstrated by pinching my two front fingers and thumb together, pretending there was a magic crystal between them.

Sol looked up at me and shook her head. "I was about to do it, but then Mom told me to put the wand away and wait until we got back to the apartment."

I hadn't thought of the safety issues that would have been raised if Sol tried to release her energy into a moving vehicle. Sure, it would have been much safer to rest one’s hand on a cloth or leather seat cover, but what if she grabbed the doorknob or locks instead? Would they break off?

With those questions on my mind, I looked at my copy of the  _ Simple Spells _ book for answers. As a beginner's spell manual, the first few pages after the foreword showed how to safely touch a crystal to break its seal, but it didn't give any further details on what surfaces were "safe" to touch in order to create an enchanter's sign without getting hurt. I started to think the reason Dr. Keller knew about these signs was because a lot of people who had them, like me, forgot to read the manual first and just touched any old thing they could find.

Lydia emerged from the kitchen carrying a half-dozen tomatoes in one plastic bag and four of Mom's oatmeal raisin cookies in a smaller bag. "Wow…you girls certainly aren't wasting any time on your studies," she said. "Come on, Marisol. Pack your things up and let's go."

"Yes, Mom," Sol said, slapping her book shut and tossing it into her bag. She started to get up from her seat when I, maybe a little hastily, motioned for her to sit back down, causing her mother to give me a mean look.

"Before you guys go," I said, "can I show you something for a quick moment?"

"Sure," Lydia said.

I rushed upstairs to my bedroom to grab my painting of Sol. When I came back downstairs, she and her mother were watching TV in the living room with Dad.

"What do you have there?" Lydia asked.

"It's a painting I've been working on," I said, turning the canvas around to show them the actual painting. "What do you think?"

They passed the painting around, with each of them nodding and smiling to various degrees. Sol showed the least excitement out of the three of them, probably to signal to her mother that she'd already seen it.

"Very impressive!" Lydia said. "I especially like the colors on the rays coming out of the wand."

"Thanks!" I said.

"How much do you want for it?"

"I wasn't really planning on selling it, to be honest…"

"Name your price, and I'll pay it," she said a little more forcefully.

"That's okay, Miss Lydia. I couldn't--"

I looked over at Dad, who was silently mouthing at me to "take the money". I knew I needed as much money as I could get, especially after buying all that stuff at the Blank Scroll. But I couldn't do it...not after Sol paid for the wand she eventually gave me. If I took the money, it would feel like I was breaking my promise and making them pay for  _ both _ wands. It seemed Lydia was dead-set on buying my painting, though.

"Are you sure?" she asked as she dug through her purse.

"Yeah. You guys can have it."

"You mean it?" Sol asked.

"I probably wouldn't have even thought of the Blank Scroll if you hadn't introduced me to it, Sol, so this is my way of saying 'thank you'," I said, handing the painting to her. "Well, that and the wand, of course."

"Awesome! You're the best, Deanna!"

Sol took me by surprise when she put the painting aside and jumped off the couch to give me a hug. I probably would have done the same if someone else had given me two free gifts worth more than 100 dollars.

"Hey, Mom!" she said. "Where do you think would be a good place to hang this? The living room? The kitchen?"

"We'll figure something out," her mother replied.

Lydia got up from the couch and slung her purse over her right shoulder, shaking Dad's hand vigorously. "It was a pleasure meeting all of you," she said, "but I think it's time for Marisol and I to get going now."

"It was nice meeting you, as well," Dad said.

A few seconds after Lydia pulled out her car keys, Mom came out of the kitchen, eating a bowl of salad. "Oh, are you guys leaving already?" she asked.

"Yeah," Lydia said. "Maybe you guys could come down to our apartment one day for some food and drinks?"

"I'd love to!"

"Looking forward to it," I said.

As we all said our goodbyes to Lydia and Sol, I already wondered when they were going to invite us down for our next meeting, and what kinds of food and drinks they would have in store for us. I bet one of them would include some of that "dragon's breath" powder she bought at the store...


	10. Study Session

After Sol and Lydia left, it was back to painting for me. I figured that whatever money I missed out on by not selling my last painting to them could be made up for in a couple of days if I got back on it right away. Rather than paint or draw another witch, I thought I would go back to landscapes for a moment and paint a picture of Emerson Park, where Sol and I first met. This time, I wanted to challenge myself by painting the park at night, with all of the sidewalk lights on.

There wasn't much for me to go on as I hadn't actually  _ been _ in or around Emerson Park after dark, so I had to use my imagination to figure out what kinds of people and things would go there if people were allowed to visit when the sun went down. While I was painting, I got a text from Sol showing off her new enchanter's sign - a cloud symbol scratched on both of her thumbs, which were bright red around where the symbols were drawn.

"How painful was it?" I asked.

"Very," she replied. "But that doesn't matter, because I'm official now! Mom's probably not going to be happy about the carpet, though..."

It wasn't easy for me to figure out exactly how happy Sol might have been through text messages alone without her throwing in a smiley face or two. Even so, I knew she had to be excited to be part of such rare company as myself, Lillian, maybe that Dustin guy, and whatever students Lillian might have been tutoring.

"That's awesome! Just make sure you put plenty of water on them so they can cool down," I warned, recalling my own sign-branding episode.

After about three hours of painting, I decided to take a rest and see what Lillian was up to. Since it was the weekend, I doubted that she would have any classes in session, so I figured it was the perfect time to call her up.

"Silverthorne School. Lillian speaking. May I help you?"

"Hi, Lillian. Er, I mean,  _ Miss _ Lillian…" I said.

"Who's this?" she asked.

"It's Deanna. We met at the Blank Scroll earlier today."

"Deanna! Of course! I remember you now." Once she remembered who I was, her tone suddenly relaxed. It felt like I was talking to an old friend, even though we had only met twice so far. "So, what's up?"

"About your school… What days and times are you open?"

"Well, we usually hold classes Monday through Friday in the morning and afternoon, and take a day off for the weekend."

"So it's a lot like grade school, then?"

"Yes and no," Lillian said after a short pause. "We run on the same basic schedule as Sharonia High, but we don't accept anyone under 18 here."

"Why not?"

"One, we want to make sure nobody's skipping school just to watch one of my pupils use magic. Two, you need to be at least 18 to buy a magic wand, and we use them quite a bit in our lessons."

"So then, it's more like college?"

Lillian laughed out loud. "I wish! My school isn't  _ that _ big. Yet..."

"Oh. Okay then…"

"Anyway," she said, adopting a serious tone again, "what's your work schedule usually like?"

"I usually work three days a week, but it's not always the same three days every time." I dug into my supply drawer to get the notepad where I wrote down my shift schedule for the upcoming week. "This time it's Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. All night shifts. Wonderful."

"That's one of the reasons I don't schedule classes after four o'clock," Lillian said. "Sometimes you just want to curl up on the couch and watch TV after a long day. Know what I mean?"

If we had been standing face-to-face, I would have nodded in agreement.

As a follow-up to that question, Lillian went on about her school's class scheduling structure, which really  _ did _ remind me of college with its Monday-Wednesday-Friday and Tuesday-Thursday blocks. Without a predictable work schedule to report, I had to take a guess and say that the Tuesday-Thursday block was the better option for me in spite of those sessions running longer than the Monday-Wednesday-Friday classes. That way, I'd only need to request two days off from work every week. Trying to convince Sybil not to call me in on those days was going to be a bit of a challenge, given the nature of this school.

"Normally, I'd invite you down to sit in on a session to show you what our classes are like," she continued, "but we're currently approaching seasonal exams, and I don't think it would be fair to you or the class to show you the advanced stuff right away."

"Aww…"

"However, if you decide you want to join us and can afford the entrance fee, you're welcome to join us the following week for Try-Out Thursday, where you come to the campus and take a short exam for us to gauge your general knowledge of magic. If you pass, you'll then get to choose what time and days you want to take classes. Don't worry about spending a whole lot of money on textbooks. Just bring your wand, some pencils, a notebook or two, and an eagerness to learn. We'll supply the rest."

Now I was confused again. Her school had a college-style scheduling system, but they supplied the students with the materials like a high school would. What kind of place was this?

"Tell you what… I'll send a packet out to you and you can decide what you want to do. Registration closes the weekend after exams, so you'd better hurry!"

Just a few minutes after I hung up, I got a text alert from Lillian with links to an application and a short information package covering most of what we talked about on the phone. The picture of the school on the front page of the packet showed a building surrounded by beautiful flowers and trees. I couldn't tell by the camera angle, but the main building looked a lot smaller than even the one at Mountain Road Art School, and that was just a couple of buildings, a park, and a parking lot. Maybe Silverthorne was like that because it was just teaching one field of study and didn't need a whole lot of different buildings to confuse people.

While I printed the information out on Mom and Dad's computer, I glanced at the weather report in another window. The next few days promised some rain, with a possibility of a thunderstorm or two. There was no way I was going to make it to Cherry's to show off my new painting to Elias...at least not until the weather cleared up.

Later that night, we ate spaghetti for dinner. Dad cooked enough for us to eat for two days, but Mom talked him into sharing some of it with the neighbors so that it wouldn't go to waste. She planned on taking some of the leftovers to work the next day.

Before getting serious about studying from my spellbook, I decided to go out for a walk. The streetlights started to come on just as I rounded the corner across from Cherry's. I had to make it quick - one loop around Cherry's, Emerson Park, and back before sunset.

The park was mostly empty, with only a few police officers watching the area to keep trespassers and fence-climbers out. The metal fencing was almost a foot taller than me, and even the most determined of climbers would have to be careful not to touch the arrowheads sticking out of the top.

On the other side of the park, on the corner of 27th Street and Sylvania Avenue, was a corner store called Fifth Corner Goods. It was the one place in town you could go if you wanted snacks, lottery tickets, or cheap cigarettes. I wasn't in the mood for any of those, so I passed on by while one of the clerks stepped outside to take a quick smoke break.

When I got back home, Mom and Dad were cuddling on the couch and watching the beginning of an action movie together. I hadn't seen this one before, but I recognized the two guys with guns as the lead actors from another action movie called  _ Unsafe Haven _ . It was one of the first movies I ever walked out on at the movie theater. They looked like they were enjoying themselves so far, so there was a chance this movie would turn out better than that one.

"Hi, sweetie," Mom said as she lifted her head from Dad's lap. "How did you walk go?"

"It was refreshing," I said.

Mom sat up and slid to her left to make room for me to sit down. "Want to watch  _ Saltwater Shakedown _ with us?"

"I guess I could sit and watch for a little while..."

The first hour of the movie wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, especially when compared to  _ Unsafe Haven _ . The effects were better and the plot made a lot more sense. I didn't make it all the way through  _ Saltwater _ either, but this was more out of a desire to continue studying from my new book than because of any faults with the movie.

I liked that the  _ Simple Spells _ book explained everything in easy-to-understand terms while still remaining accessible to readers of all skill levels. The illustrations were a nice touch, but a bit too intricate for a book with the word "Simple" in its title. The only thing missing from my study session was someone else to discuss it with. Try-Out Thursday was more than a week away, but I felt like I needed to find someone else to talk to so I could better prepare myself for Lillian's tests.

* * *

 

I slept comfortably through the night. The rain had come a little earlier than the weather report predicted, but it meant less traffic for me to drown out with my pillow, so it all balanced out.

After a quick shower and change of clothes, I headed downstairs to eat a bowl of corn flakes and watch the morning news. It looked like the police had arrested a suspect in connection with one of the shootings, while the suspect in the second incident was still at large. I still wanted to know what Lydia was looking for when she stopped by those blockades, but that would have to wait until we visited their apartment.

Mom came downstairs looking half-asleep. "Why can't it be the weekend again already?" she groaned while gently rubbing the left side of her neck.

"What's wrong, Mom?" I asked.

"My neck is so sore right now. I think I need to get some new pillows. You should probably change yours too, Deanna. I know at least one of them must have lost its fluff by now."

I hadn't really thought about changing my pillows. I tended to fluff them every night before going to sleep, so whatever soreness I felt was usually gone by the time I woke up.

"Do you think you'll still be able to go to work?" I asked.

"I think so," Mom said. "Why do you ask?"

"Uh...can I go with you?"

Mom stopped rubbing the back of her neck and started scratching her head. "What for?"

"You know...to read stuff. Plus, it's going to be lonely being in the house by myself."

"How do you plan on getting back home? It's going to rain all day, and your father's going to be at work, and he's going to be in control of the car."

"I don't mind taking the bus."

Dad, who was listening in on our conversation, slipped behind Mom and massaged both sides of her neck, causing her to smile wider as he applied more pressure. "Thanks for that, honey," she said as she turned to give him a kiss.

"Did you say you wanted to go to the library, Didi?" he asked.

"Yeah, maybe just for a few hours," I said.

"I'll take you over there after your mother and I eat. Just be careful on your way home, okay?"

"Don't worry, Dad. I'll be fine. Trust me."

It started raining harder, so I went upstairs to pick up my jacket and umbrella, and to make sure my magic wand was still in its case. Once Mom and Dad were finished eating, I put my spellbook and wand case in a plastic bag to keep it from getting wet, and rode with them to the Sharonia Free Library.

There were two small square tables near the front desk for kids to sit and read some of the picture books behind them, while the larger round table to their right was meant to be used by teens and young adults around my age. That area was where most of the books were kept. For some reason, there was a giant orange stuffed rabbit propped up against the romance novel section. I thought it would have fit better somewhere around the kids' tables just so the hidden message behind its current location was a little less obvious.

Mom clocked in at the front desk, and I took my bag over to the adult table and continued reading where I left off last night. The library slowly began to fill up over the next 15 minutes, with a group of five kids and a young woman meeting by the kids' area. Two of the boys went to the bookshelf to grab picture books to read to themselves, while the babysitter picked out a larger one to read to the others.

I saw another young woman to my right hauling a crate full of books to the general shelf area. She was tall and bulky, and I guessed she also had to be strong to carry that many books all by herself. Then I noticed two more crates of books next to the one she sat down, so it didn't surprise me when she sat in the chair across from me and rested her head on the table, panting heavily.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

Without even lifting her head, she said to me, "I'll be fine. I just need a few minutes."

She only got about thirty seconds of rest before Mom called on her to help another library assistant file the books away. Reluctantly, she got up and went over to help the boy, putting away books on the shelves too high for him to reach.

Several minutes later, I saw Elias come in with what looked like three of his friends. He was holding the hand of the only girl in the group, and the two boys behind him sported matching brown backpacks that didn't look like they had a lot of books in them.

"Deanna?" Elias asked with surprise. "What are you doing here?"

"Eh… I just wanted to get out of the house for the day, so I came here," I said. "Don't you have work or something?"

"Dad gave me the week off. Me and my friends are here to study for our spring exams."

Elias and the others sat down in a semicircle across from my seat and unloaded their backpacks, pulling out pencils, notebooks, and textbooks on algebra, geometry, and trigonometry. I had learned some of those concepts in my last few years of high school, but a few of the problems they were reviewing were too advanced for me.

"So, are you guys all in college?" I asked.

"Yeah," the girl said. "We're freshmen at St. Gabriel College."

"St. Gabriel? That must be pretty far away for you to go."

"Not for me. I live in St. Gabriel, so it's only a bus ride away."

"What about you guys?" I asked the other two boys at the table. "Where are you from?"

"Uptown," the boy at the far right of the table said.

"We don't usually ride to school together," the boy next to him said, "but we all agreed to meet here today. I know the weather sucks right now, but this was our last good chance to meet up before exam day."

"I see. Well, I wish you all the best of luck on your exams," I said.

We took turns introducing each other. The scruffy-haired boy sitting next to Shaniya was named Antoine, and the short-haired boy next to him was named Stefan. Once Elias' study group started discussing review questions with each other, I tuned out and continued to read from my spellbook so that I didn't distract them. I got a few weird looks, but nothing more than that.

Midway through their study session, Stefan reached into his jacket pockets and passed out chocolate bars to everyone at the table, including the big library assistant who came back for another rest after emptying one of the book crates. At that moment, I recognized him as the guy standing in line behind Lillian at Ada's a few days ago.

When he slid one of the chocolate bars my way, I didn't know what to do. I didn't know where he got them. For all I knew, they could have been stolen from Ada's or the Dollar Shack. I didn't want to be an accessory to a potential crime, but I hadn't eaten anything since I left the house and didn't want to appear discourteous or ungrateful, so I took it. No one else seemed to care. They all just looked happy to have candy to eat.

By the time I finished studying, I learned a few more new spells, including how to detect magical and metal objects. The only problem was that I needed to have my wand out to use it as a scanner, robbing me of the element of surprise.

I wanted to read something different after that. There were dozens of different young adult and romance novels on the shelves behind Antoine. I got up and picked one out at random, hoping that it would at least be good for a laugh.

Just as I picked the book up from the shelf, several bright flashes of light blinked through the windows in rapid succession, followed shortly by a loud rumbling noise.

"What the hell was that?" Elias asked.

"Come on, E! Stay focused," Antoine said. "We just have a few more of these to go."

Soon after that, there was another lightning flash and a peal of thunder so loud it almost made me drop the book I was holding. Two of the kids at the square tables started crying and curled up close to the babysitter for protection. For the rest of us, there was nothing we could do but continue what we were doing. That didn't last very long, as all the lights in the room went out just a few minutes later.

"Anybody got a light?" Shaniya groaned.


	11. Keeping the Lights On

A few moments after the power went out, we all got anxious. There wasn't enough light in the room for anyone to read, making it difficult for Elias or his friends to get any studying done.

"Aw, man! Now, what are we going to do?" Elias complained.

"Maybe we could move our books over by one of the windows," Shaniya suggested. "That way we could at least see what we're doing."

"All four of us?" Stefan asked. "The only way we'd all fit over there is if we moved this table."

"No way! We can barely see each other as it is," Elias said.

Stefan laughed off Elias' observation. "Relax, Elias… I know that. I wasn't seriously suggesting that we try to move furniture around in the dark."

They all looked over at Antoine, who appeared to be typing something on his cell phone.

"Who are you trying to call?" I asked.

"Nobody," he said. "I'm trying to find the flashlight function on my phone."

"Won't it be difficult to hold your phone and do your review questions at the same time?"

"Maybe, but I don't want to sit around in the dark doing nothing for who-knows-how-long."

After a bit of fiddling around, the back of Antoine's cell phone emitted a bright white light. He rested his left elbow on the table to try to get a good enough angle to highlight everyone's books. It worked for a little while, but I still thought it looked awkward for him to have his left arm raised while he tried to write answers  _ and _ turn the pages with his right hand without anything holding his books in place. Even his friends weren't keen on having to hold his books down for him. Eventually, Shaniya gave up and fell face-first into her algebra book. Antoine couldn't resist the temptation to shine his phone light on her curly black hair, which looked like it took up half the table.

"This isn't working," she said. "We need, like, a real flashlight or a desk lamp or something. Something with batteries, at least."

"Sorry," a voice from behind us called out. It didn't sound like Mom, but I couldn't see who it was very well. "The desk lights are all hooked up to the electrical system, so we can't turn them on until the power is restored."

Following a collective groan from everyone at the table, I looked around and saw that the kids' section was also mostly in the darkness. The library's layout only offered enough room for two windows - one along the western wall, and one along the southern corner near the checkout desk. The rest of the walls were lined with bookshelves. Any light that would try to get into the library through any windows along those walls would have to get past years-old wood grain first.

Another flash of lightning lit up the room for a fraction of a second. The thunder that came after it was just as intense as the last one. Fortunately, it sounded like the storm was starting to move away from town. It didn't guarantee that we'd have the power back on any time soon, but at least it would relieve us of one headache.

I got up to look outside the closest window. With so much rain coming down, I felt like I was standing behind a waterfall. In those rare moments when I could see anything through the raindrops, I saw cars struggling to decide when to cross at the intersection with the traffic lights out. The few people that were still outside scrambled to find shelter, ducking between store awnings and building overhangs. If not for the lightning, I worried that they would have a hard time seeing where they were going, too.

Suddenly, an idea came to me. I'd have to go outside in the pouring rain to do it, but I thought it might be worth a shot.

"Where's she going?" I heard Elias mumble as I put on my jacket and took my bag to the front door.

"Deanna? Deanna!" Mom called.  "What are you doing? Sit back down! It's dangerous out there!"

"I-I just need a few minutes to check something out," I stammered. "I'll b-be right back. Promise!"

As soon as I pulled the front door open, it felt like a thousand raindrops fell to my feet at once. "Close the door!" one of the boys cried.

I put up my umbrella as I let the door shut behind me. There was no awning or overhang to protect me from the rain, so this was my only line of defense.

I wasn't counting on needing to use my wand, but I was glad I brought it with me. It wasn't that I was afraid of anyone knowing I was a witch. I just needed to get outside where I could actually see the spell I was going to cast.

So far, I had only practiced casting spells under normal weather conditions, or indoors where I didn't have to worry about bad weather or bad lighting. In a way, magic was like driving. You never knew how good you really were until you had to cast spells with rain falling down around you, or thunder and lightning breaking your concentration every few seconds, or gusty winds throwing your aim off. One wrong stroke or thrust would put me in danger of causing serious damage to myself, the library, and everyone else inside.

I waited a few seconds for the thunder to subside before briefly closing my eyes and picturing the "Glow" symbol in my mind. It formed a small circle, split in half by a long vertical line. I stuck my arm out and drew the lines to match the symbol, pointing my wand toward the ground so that I wouldn't hit any cars or pedestrians if my spell misfired. When I pulled my rain-soaked arm back under my umbrella, I heard a clicking sound, and the gemstone on my wand brightened up in a flash! It was so bright that I could still see the afterimage after turning away for a few seconds.

I waved my new magical flashlight around a few times to see if it could hold its charge in the rain. Holding the wand out in front of me seemed to project a spotlight outward that shined a golden light up to twenty-five feet away. A few cars passed through the strange circle of light, one of which was a police cruiser. The car stopped a little further up the road, and two officers filed out of the car and started walking toward the library, waving around flashlights. I wasn't sure who else noticed the light from my wand, or what the officers were going to do or say to me once they found the source, so I went back inside as quickly as I could before they spotted me.

I re-entered the library holding my wand upright to avoid shining it in anyone's faces. Everyone looked at me with astonishment as they saw the room light up as if the power had never gone out. Most of them covered their eyes or tried to look away from the glowing crystal. Elias and his friends took pictures of me with their camera phones, and I tried my best not to look embarrassed.

"Where'd you get that from?" one of the boys asked.

"Cool!" said another.

"I want to hold it!" a third one said, reaching up to grab the light before the babysitter restrained him.

"Sit back down!" she said. "Don't touch it! You'll hurt yourself."

As I walked closer to the front desk, I saw another curly, black-haired woman talking on the phone. "Okay, I'll let them know," she said, and hung up. She turned to the rest of us and added, "That was the electric company. They said that lightning struck a tree somewhere on 15th Street and it brought down some power lines. It'll probably be another three hours until emergency crews can clean up the debris and restore power."

"Three hours?! How bad is it out there?" Antoine asked.

"It's pretty messed up. Most of Sharonia is out, and parts of St. Gabriel and Jademore are out, too."

"Seriously?!" I moaned. Having to use my magic wand to keep the library lit was one thing, but I didn't know if I had it in me to do it for three straight hours. The wand still looked like it had plenty of energy left, so I hoped it wouldn't run out before the power came back on.

As long as I kept my grip on the wand, the Glow spell would stay active, but it also consumed energy. Watching the wand's energy meter slowly drain was like watching a candle melt. It was a good thing I didn't have to worry about being burned by hot wax.

Before I had a chance to sit back down, I felt a soft vibration in my back pocket.  _ At least the cell phone towers still work _ , I thought happily.

The two officers entered the room and turned their flashlights off when they saw me holding my wand aloft. One was a fresh-faced and fair-skinned young woman about the same height as me, and her partner was a wiry young man just a few inches taller than her. He appeared to be fiddling with some keys in his pocket.

"We're with the Sharonia Town Police department. Is everything all right here?" the female officer asked.

The male officer leaned toward her with a nervous look on his face. "Careful, Yates. This one's got a wand," he mumbled.

"Duh! I can see that," Officer Yates said.

Everyone looked over at the two officers, and then at me, worried that something scary was about to go down. I tried not to make any sudden movements as the officers approached. They looked almost as scared as I did.

"Is there a problem, officers?" Mom asked.

"No, ma'am," the male officer said. As he got closer, I caught a glimpse of the name on his badge: "Greer". Yates and Greer...those two names just screamed "buddy cop show main characters".

"We saw a weird light on the road and traced it to this library," he continued. "Then we saw this young woman standing outside and it looked like she was holding something glowing, so we came to investigate."

"And it looks like our hunch was right," Officer Yates said. "Do you mind if we ask a couple of questions?"

"To me?" I asked.

Both officers nodded, and I took a deep breath and walked with them toward the front door with my wand arm still raised, as it was the only thing keeping the room from falling back into near-total darkness. Almost everyone else in the room went back to what they were doing before the power outage, only occasionally looking back in my direction to see what was happening.

Officer Greer was the first one to speak. "What's your name, young lady?"

"Uh, Deanna Richardson, sir," I said.

Officer Yates pulled out a notepad and started taking notes. I was surprised she was even able to write anything in it, considering how soggy it looked.

"Do you live in this area, Ms. Richardson?" Officer Greer asked.

"Yes."

"Would you mind telling us why you were standing outside this library in the middle of a heavy thunderstorm?"

He certainly didn't waste any time getting to  _ that _ question.

"Well, um...I  _ was _ inside, and I wanted to go outside so I could get something to light the place up."

Officer Greer raised an eyebrow. "'Light the place up', you say?"

"Yeah. I mean--" Officer Yates glared at me and started writing faster on her notepad. I had to quickly think of something to say to climb out of the hole I was about to dig for myself. "No! No, no, not  _ that _ kind of light! I meant like a  _ flashlight _ ."

"Why couldn't you have done that inside?" she asked. "Aren't there any flashlights or lanterns or candles in here?"

"Not that I know of," I said. "I have a couple of friends here who tried to use their cell phones as flashlights, but those can only put out so much light, and there are also little kids here, and I didn't want--"

Both officers were staring at me now, and Greer twirled his finger around, signaling for me to stop rambling and get to the point. "Okay, uh...the reason I was standing out there was because I needed to come outside so I could see well enough to cast a light spell without hurting anyone."

"I guess that makes sense...in its own weird way," Officer Yates said, masking an exasperated sigh from her partner.

"Are you sure you'll be able to keep this room lit all by yourself, Ms. Richardson?" Officer Greer asked.

"I hope I won't have to," I said as I briefly looked behind me. The way everyone was huddled around their respective tables made it look more like they were ready to tell ghost stories than doing any actual reading. I wouldn't have been surprised if any of them suddenly  _ did _ start telling ghost stories. The outdoor atmosphere - such as it was - was just right, and the indoor lighting was the right color. The only things missing were the graham crackers, chocolate bars, and roasted marshmallows.

The two officers went over to talk to Mom and her boss, leaving me alone to hold my glowing magic wand up until well after they had left. I walked around the room once to see how everyone else was doing, and then I took one of the chairs from Elias' table and put it as close to the center of the floor as I could. The less I had to move around, the better it would be for everyone.

Every half hour or so, I switched the hand I held my wand in to keep them both from getting tired. It looked like the crystal's light dimmed when I held it in my left hand, but it didn't affect the brightness of the Glow spell. Sitting so close to such a bright light for so long was making me sweat. If I had known I was going to be here for a few hours, I would have packed a lunch. Elias and his friends looked like they were getting hungry or thirsty, as well.

"Deanna? Do you guys want something to drink?" Mom asked. "We've got some water bottles in the mini-fridge in the office. They're still cold."

"Yes, please!" I said as enthusiastically as possible. Sure, it wasn't food, but I would have taken anything to help me cool down a few degrees.

Mom fetched a few bottles of water from the staff room and handed one to me, while Elias and Antoine accepted two more bottles for themselves. Sipping on that water was probably the best feeling I'd had all day, which wasn't much considering we still didn't have power. I would have given anything to go to a corner store and buy a yogurt parfait or a bag of chips. At least the rain was starting to slow down. I hadn't heard any thunder in a while, either.

After I went through my bottle of water, I used my free hand to check my cell phone. I got a couple of text messages from Dad asking how Mom and I were doing.

"I think everything will be alright," I responded, trying my best to type with one hand. "What about you?"

"It's been slow because of the weather, but we're doing the best we can. You guys have any light over there?"

I looked at my wand for a moment, smiled, and then said, "Yeah."

"Good! Want me to bring a few donuts home for you guys?"

"I'd like that."

It was good to know that Dad was still in good spirits in spite of everything.

I turned to check on everyone at the big table. "How are you guys doing over there?" I asked.

"We finally got everything done," Antoine said. "We're just double-checking now to make sure all of our study notes are up to date."

"Awesome!" I said. There was really no other way to put it, really. I would have given them a round of applause if I didn't have to keep holding onto my wand. "So, what are you guys going to do now?"

"Just ride the storm out, I guess. They have to be close to finished working on the power lines by now, don't they?"

"I don't know. Has it been three hours? I kinda lost track of time."

"You know how those estimates are," Shaniya said. "They  _ say _ three hours, but they could really mean four or five. I'm surprised that you were able to find a light so quickly. Where did you find that thing, anyway?"

"A friend gave it to me," I told her.

"Wait...do you mean that weird girl who came running into my shop a few days ago?" Elias asked.

"Yeah."

"I'm...kinda surprised, actually. I thought you were more into painting and stuff."

"Oh, I still am. I just finished a new painting recently. Next time I come to the shop, I'll show it to you."

"That'd be great! I'm looking forward to seeing it."

The energy indicator on my wand showed that I had less than half a meter to go. I was glad I didn't have to keep casting my Glow spell to keep the light going, but I had a feeling it wasn't meant to be used this long in one sitting.

A few minutes later, the lights suddenly came on, to the delight of everyone in the room. The ceiling lights had mostly drowned out the light coming from my wand, but it was still possible to see a faint golden glow along the walls if one looked hard enough. I relaxed my grip and let the crystal's light fade before putting the wand back into its case.

The babysitter gathered all of the children around her and prepared to leave, confident that the rain and thunder had stopped long enough to get them home safely.

"Thank you!" they all said to me at once. Their caretaker hadn't said anything to me the whole time, and I couldn't figure out why. I hoped it was because she was focused on keeping the kids calm and not out of fear of me or my magic powers. She did wave back to me when I waved to everyone on the way out, though. I accepted the fact that it was the most I would get out of her.

Over at the big table, Elias and the others were also getting ready to leave. Shaniya and Elias exchanged flirty looks while their two other friends got up to stretch after sitting down in the same spot for so long.

"Man, am I glad that's over," Stefan said.

"Me too," Antoine said. "You want to go to Rococo's after this?"

"Nah. I gotta head back home. My dad's probably still freaking out right now."

"Want me to start up the car?" Shaniya asked.

Everyone else at the table nodded.

"Okay, then. Let's go, guys!"

They all gathered their books and bags and got up from the table. Shaniya then turned to me and said, "I'm not sure how or  _ why _ you did what you did, but you saved us a lot of time today."

"Yeah...thanks a bunch, Deanna," Elias added. "We wouldn't have been able to pull this off without your help."

"Well, we probably could have, but it would have taken a bit longer."

"It was nothing," I said. "I honestly hoped I wouldn't have to use that...or at least not have to go outside to use it first." I felt embarrassed being the only one to laugh at my own joke.

"That trick you just did was almost as good as that lady in the blue cloak," Stefan said. "Almost."

"Uh...thanks?"

Antoine snickered. "I'm not sure what he's talking about. We're all grateful for your help today. Really."

As I waved to everyone as they walked out of the library, I tried to figure out which one of them was the leader of the study group. I thought it had to be Antoine since he seemed to be the most serious about getting everyone to get their work done. Then I considered Shaniya since she was the one who drove everyone over to the library in the first place. Compared to those two, Elias and Stefan just appeared to be along for the ride. Assuming they all passed their exams, I hoped we would meet again and be able to hang out more before the start of the summer season.

Now it was my turn to leave. I'd done what I needed to do at the library and was ready to go home.

"Deanna!" Mom called out to me before I reached the front door. "Are you sure you'll be okay getting back home? Want an extra bottle of water?"

"No thanks, Mom," I said. "I'll be fine."

"Make sure to call or text me when you get back in, okay?"

"I will."

I gave Mom a hug and a kiss on the cheek and walked out to the bus stop across the street.

The rain and the wind from the storm left a lot of puddles and branches on the roads and sidewalks. When my bus eventually arrived, I was surprised when the driver simply decided to plow through everything rather than look for less hazardous detours. It felt like the driver was as determined to get home as quickly as possible just like everyone else. Then again, I couldn't really blame them after a storm like that.


	12. Page 15 Girl

The first thing I did after getting home and setting my umbrella aside to dry was sit down and send a text message to Mom and Dad to tell them I was okay. It was the fastest way to get in touch with them without interrupting their normal business flow. They probably wouldn't have been mad if I called the bakery or the library directly, but their bosses definitely wouldn't have appreciated it.

Next, I called Randy and Sol to see how they were holding up. Randy was still nursing his ankle injury, so he didn't have to move around much once the storms hit. He hoped to be back at work in a couple of days once the doctors got a good look at his ankle again and saw that he could walk without hurting himself.

Sol was a bit grumpy when I called her. She was in the middle of a dance workout routine when the power went out, and spent the next few hours after that with almost nothing to do.

"Don't you have games on your phone that you could play?" I asked.

"That's not really my thing," she said. "Besides, I don't have one of those cool smartphones like almost everybody else."

"Why don't you ask your mom to buy you one?"

"I already did. She said she won't do it. She wants me to find a job first."

I paused for a moment to consider what Sol was saying. On the surface, it didn't sound like a bad idea. All I knew about Sol's schedule was that she took dance classes on Wednesdays and Fridays. I didn't know if she also went to a traditional school or community college like Elias did when he wasn't working. If she didn't, then she probably had lots of free time to fill in the mornings.

"I have an idea!" I said. "I could put in a good word for you at Ada's. We could use a few more helping hands around the store."

"I'll think about it," Sol replied, unconvinced.

"Okay, how about Lynx Donuts?"

"Hmm… I haven't really done any baking since home ec class last year, but how hard can it be?"

Sol's response was more encouraging this time around. She sounded genuinely interested in working at the bakery with Dad. I didn't really know if there were any openings. I just threw out a suggestion that happened to stick.

I was about to ask Sol a few more questions when I heard a loud knock at the door.

"Hold on, Sol… I'll call you back later," I said before hanging up and getting off the sofa.

I approached the door slowly, unsure of who to expect. Mom and Dad weren't due home for at least another hour, and they both had their house keys, so they didn't need to knock to let me know they were coming in. Whoever it was, I wasn't going to let them in unless Mom or Dad was present. Maybe not even then.

"Hello?" I called, pressing my back against the door to buy myself some time in case whoever was outside tried to force their way in.

"Hi! May I speak with Deanna Richardson, please?" a male voice on the other side asked. His soothing, deep baritone voice sounded benign, but I wasn't going to let that catch me off-guard.

"Who's asking?"

"Rodney Speller. I'm a reporter for the McCarthy Metro Times."

"May I see some ID?"

I hadn't looked directly at this "Rodney" guy since he showed up, so I didn't know if he was telling the truth about his identity. I should have asked him how he even found my house in the first place.

Looking through the peephole, I saw a tall, broad-shouldered man in a loose-fitting white polo shirt. He was holding up a badge of some kind, but I couldn't see what was on it because the peephole made everything on the other side look smaller. I told him to bring the badge closer so I could tell if it was real. Once I saw the McCarthy Metro logo, I unlocked the door.

"Does this mean I can come inside?" he asked.

"No," I told him flatly. Even if he was really from a newspaper of some prestige, I was always told not to let any strangers in the house. Rodney's furrowed brow indicated that he wasn't happy with what I said, but I had a duty to protect myself and my property.

"Well, I can't exactly conduct this interview through the door, Miss Richardson," he said. "You'll either have to let me inside or come outside yourself. It's your choice."

I opened the front door and stepped outside, clinging to it as tightly as possible to prevent him from sneaking inside. If I was the only one he was interviewing, he didn't need to see what was in my house. He didn't seem very interested anyway; as soon as I stepped outside, he looked down and scanned me before taking out a notepad from his pants pocket and scribbling on it.

"Let's get started," Rodney said, suddenly adopting a formal tone of voice. "Could you tell me where you were and what you were doing when the power first went out?"

"I was at the library," I said.

"I see… Did you notice anything strange coming out of the library?"

"No. Why?"

"There were reports of an odd golden light coming from that area around noon. I figured that since you were there, you might have seen where it was coming from."

"Oh,  _ that _ …"

I could have continued to try to play it off and pretend I didn't know, but if I lied to this reporter, then the police would find out, and they'd probably come after me for real. They'd never pass up an opportunity to try to catch someone in a lie, even if they weren't around to hear it.

"Yeah, I remember seeing it," I said, trying my hardest to stay cool. Being interviewed - or interrogated, in the case of Officers Yates and Greer - twice in the same day wasn't helping one bit.

"Really? From where?" Rodney asked, looking up from his notepad only after I admitted to seeing the weird light.

"A magic wand."

"Whose wand was it?"

"Mine."

What surprised me most about Rodney's reaction was his lack of surprise. I basically told him I was a witch and he didn't flinch or recoil in disgust or anything. Maybe he was trying to maintain an air of professionalism by not freaking out. Maybe he had seen or heard of so many wizards and witches that seeing one more didn't faze him. I didn't know which of those was true...or more impressive.

The most I saw him do was slow down and nod, perhaps to give me a chance to better explain myself.

"I wasn't really trying to shine any light on the road," I said. "I was trying to prepare my wand to use as a torch for everyone inside the library. There was a group of little kids in there… They were all reading stories and got scared when the power went out. I couldn't just leave them in the dark."

Rodney nodded again and continued writing. "Go on…"

"And I had friends in there, too. A couple of college kids studying for spring exams. They wanted to get their work done quickly and needed a light. We didn't have flashlights, and our cell phone lights weren't good enough, so I went outside and turned my wand on. Those were some of the most exhausting hours of my life."

Rodney gave me a wry smile as I told him more about what happened at the library. He also asked me the names of everybody else I knew there at the time, presumably to interview them later to corroborate my story. I could only give him Elias' full name because I had only just met his friends. When it looked like he had enough material for his story, he shoved his notepad back into his pocket and did a little twirl with his pen, which looked cool until he almost dropped it on the welcome mat.

"That was a very intriguing story, Miss Richardson," he said. "If you're lucky, you might see your name in tomorrow's paper!"

He was still smiling, but it felt like he was more excited about seeing his name on the byline than he was about putting my name in the paper. I didn't really think about it much, either. The only other time I'd been mentioned in the news was on a list of Sharonia High graduates from several years ago. Looking back on it now, it didn't seem like much, but the day I received my diploma was one of my proudest moments, both for myself and my family. I wondered what my old high school friends would think about me now that I was about to be "small-time" famous for engaging in witchcraft.

After Rodney thanked me for agreeing to the interview, he took off in an SUV bearing his newspaper's logo. I went back into the living room and crashed out on the couch, turning the television on to a random program and letting it lull me to sleep.

Dad arrived a little over an hour later, waking me up by shaking the bag of donuts he promised to bring home.

"Everything okay, sweetie?" he asked.

"It was rough," I said, "but I think I'm fine now."

Dad sat down and changed the channel in search of a talk show or game show to watch, but most of the basic networks were airing reports on the aftermath of the storm. The cameras panned over images of fallen trees and crushed cars in parts of the county I hadn't been to or seen before. At least two people died during the storm, unable to escape after being trapped under fallen debris. I started to get exhausted by the whole thing and hoped in vain that there would be something more uplifting to watch.

"Your mother told me that you helped keep the lights on at the library today," Dad said after taking a bite out of a glazed donut.

"Did she tell you  _ how _ I did it?" I asked.

"No. I kinda got the idea after your 'wink-and-nod' text message earlier." He reached into his bag and pulled out two donuts, one powdered and one plain, holding each one up and asking me to choose. I didn't really care which one I was going to eat, so I closed my eyes and picked the powdered donut out at random.

"Really?"

"I mean, yeah. You were quick to sneak that bag into the car, and I knew you hadn't taken anything out from the library recently. You didn't bring anything to eat with you, either, so the only other thing I could think of for you to put in there was that magic wand of yours."

Once again, Dad had figured me out. It wasn't like I was trying to keep it a big secret from them, though. I just wanted to be prepared in case something bad happened. Regrettably, a power outage in a storm like that was the  _ best-case _ scenario. If the wind had knocked one of the nearby trees down, I wouldn't have been able to react fast enough to stop it, or strong enough to lift it by myself after it had fallen.

"I didn't think you'd actually try to go outside with all that rain and thunder," he said.

"Hey, at least I tried to stay close to the building so I wouldn't get struck by lightning. That's gotta count for something, right?"

Dad didn't even try to hold back his laughter. It was a good thing he wasn't eating anything at the time, or things could have gotten messy. "Seriously, though… I'm still not sure  _ why _ you decided to do that, but using your wand to light up the library was pretty smart thinking. We're both proud of you, and I'm sure everyone else in the library appreciated your help."

"Thanks, Dad!"

After I finished my donut, I gave Dad a big hug and sat down to watch television with him once the news networks finally got off the subject of the big storm.

A little while after Mom got home, we ordered out for pizza because none of us were really in the mood to cook fresh. We were running low on food supplies anyway, so we stopped over at Ada's after we ate to load up on meats, milk, rice, and vegetables. Everyone there seemed to carry on as if the power outage never happened. It was late enough in the day for everyone to have moved on to other things, and that was just fine by me.

When we got back home, I took one last look at the weather report before going to bed. It was still scheduled to rain early in the morning, but fortunately not as bad as the storm that just passed through. I planned on trying my luck and going to Cherry's to show off my "Emerson Park at night" painting. Elias probably wouldn't be around to see it right away, but I figured his father might get a kick out of it, as well.

* * *

 

I woke up the next morning with a stiff neck. I was so anxious to get to sleep that I forgot to fluff my pillows. Rubbing it down only helped so much, so I took a pain medicine pill to help make the pain go away. I also checked my right hand for signs of damage. I  _ had _ been holding onto that wand for a pretty long time, after all. Luckily, there didn't appear to be any lingering redness or changes to my enchanter's sign. That annoying hole was still there, so I had to keep my gloves on when I wasn't using the wand.

After eating a bowl of corn flakes for breakfast and waiting for Mom and Dad to go to work, I tried to come up with a new idea for a painting, but I wasn't motivated to actually start working on it. All I really wanted to do was get on down to Cherry's to sell my Emerson Park painting and get it over with.

Holding onto my bagged painting and my umbrella at the same time was awkward. It was too big to carry under my arm and uncomfortable to sling over my shoulder. Holding it like a normal bag was the best way to go, even if it meant lifting it an inch or two whenever it got close to touching a puddle.

The store was a bit quieter than last time, thanks in part to the rain. Mr. Cherry was at the front counter, sighing to himself and reading a copy of the McCarthy Metro Times. I had to ring the bell to get his attention, just as I did with Elias when I first saw him.

"Unbelievable! Simply unbelievable!" he grumbled. Behind the paper, I could hear the sound of a fist slamming against wood.

"Uh, what's unbelievable, sir?" I asked cautiously.

Without looking up from his paper, he said, "They caught a couple of idiots playing around with 'strange objects' near the police station during yesterday's power outage. Now you tell me: why in the hell would you go  _ anywhere _ near a police station with anything that might look like a weapon, especially on a bad weather day?"

_ "Why", indeed _ , I thought. A sudden power outage would be the perfect cover to cause mischief to try to get the press to dismiss such incidents as "accidents". I started to worry about what kind of "strange objects" Mr. Cherry was talking about. Guns? Knives? Bombs? Whatever they were, I wasn't even remotely qualified to offer my opinion on the subject, for I'd only heard about it as an off-handed aside on the morning news before leaving.

Mr. Cherry slowly composed himself and sat the paper down to his left. "Never mind that," he said. "It looks like you have something for me."

I removed the Emerson Park painting from the table and placed it on the counter.

"Amazing!" he said, his eyes dancing around as he examined the painting. "Did you do this yourself?"

"Yeah."

"If I didn't have to watch this shop every day, I'd buy it myself. How much do you want for it, Deanna?"

I had a price in mind, but I was distracted by the doorbell ringing behind me. I turned around and saw a middle-aged man in a dark blue poncho carrying what looked like a finely-polished brass lantern. The moment he saw me, he walked back outside without saying a word. I didn't think I was  _ that _ scary-looking. Was I?

I turned back to Mr. Cherry and said to him, "Let's go with forty."

"That's it? Just forty? Why not go a bit higher?"

"How much would you pay for this, Mr. Cherry?"

"Fifty, maybe," he said. "Sixty on a good day."

I didn't want to do fifty dollars again, and sixty felt too high for a painting I just made up as I went along. Another customer came in with a plastic bag of his own, giving me little time to debate a suitable price. "I guess I'll go with fifty again," I told Mr. Cherry after a bit of nudging from him and the customer behind me.

"You got it," he said as he filled out the necessary paperwork.

I stepped aside to let the next customer go, but Mr. Cherry stopped me before I could leave the store. "Oh, Deanna, before you go… I wanted to say 'thank you'."

"Oh? What for?" I asked.

"For helping my son out yesterday. He told me you were there to provide some light for him and his friends when they couldn't find a working flashlight in the library."

"It was nothing."

The next customer dropped his bag on the counter, causing it to make a muffled rattling noise. He then turned to me and asked, "Did you say your name was Deanna?"

All at once, I wondered who this guy was, how he knew my name, and what he was carrying in that bag. "I didn't say it, but yes, I'm Deanna," I said as politely as possible.

"Aha! So  _ you're _ the girl I read about in the paper this morning." The guy fiercely pointed at me, and I still didn't know what he was going on about. At least he didn't turn around and make a break for the door, unlike the guy with the lantern.

I asked Mr. Cherry if I could borrow his newspaper for a moment. I skimmed through almost every page in the paper and didn't find any articles that mentioned me by name. Eventually, the curious gentleman pointed out a headline buried on page 15, just a few pages before the reader mail section: "Small-Time Sorceress Lights Up Library."

"'S-Small-Time'?"

The headline wasn't exactly wrong - I'd only been dabbling in magic for a little over a week - but the use of the word "small-time" made me sound like a two-bit criminal. The actual body of the story was more complimentary, even mentioning how I (foolishly) braved the pouring rain to ensure nobody got hurt.

When the other customer completed his transaction, he looked at me again with a skeptical eye. "Wait a minute...you don't really look that much like a witch," he said. "Can you show me how you did that light thing? Just for a minute?"

I quickly declined his request. Even if I remembered to bring my magic wand, I didn't think Mr. Cherry would have appreciated me showing off my powers in a room full of fragile merchandise. The curious man left the store with his empty bag stuffed in his pocket, disappointed that I didn't give him the brief magic show he wanted.

I figured it was time for me to return home, as well. As I walked home and looked around me, I started to wonder what my newfound name recognition would mean for me going forward. Would people be more or less inclined to buy my paintings if they knew I was a witch? Would they turn and run away if they saw me, or stop me on the street and ask me to do tricks for them? I knew I needed to prepare myself for all of these possibilities and then some, but all I wanted to do for the moment was relax.


	13. Disappearing, Reappearing Act

After eating a quick lunch, I took a second look at the application Lillian sent to me and decided to fill it out for real. I started to wonder why the school charged a fifteen-dollar application fee considering how it was probably the only school of its kind in the area, but by the time I completed the application, it was too late. At least the person running the website was smart enough to encrypt my submission so that my money and personal information didn't disappear into some kind of black hole.

I went outside into the backyard to recharge my magic wand, stopping to wonder if there was a more efficient and less destructive way to do it. The patches of dead grass looked like they were still growing back, but I worried about what would happen once they stopped. I still hadn't figured out a way to do the recharge dance that wasn't both exhausting and embarrassing. Every time I'd done it so far, I had privacy on my side, but I knew I'd eventually have to improve my dancing skills if I had to do it with other people watching.

I knew I had a long night ahead of me, so I tried to get a quick nap in before my next shift started. When the timer on my cell phone went off, I didn't feel any more energized than when I first fell asleep. I had a half-hour before I had to be at work, and Mom and Dad weren't going to be home in time to drive me to the store. I had to use all of my strength to get off the couch, out the door, and down the street to get into Ada's without falling asleep again.

Once I made it inside, I jumped right into the express lane and bought an orange-flavored can of Quick-Burst energy drink. The liquid inside the translucent can looked like a combination of pure orange juice and caffeinated orange soda. It seemed really popular among teens and young adults. Another woman at the next register, a few years younger than me from the look of it, had a six-pack of cherry and orange Quick-Bursts in her basket. Anyone planning on buying that many energy drinks in one trip was either preparing for a big game the next day, or one hell of an all-nighter.

I just wanted one can to help me get through this shift. I hope I'd still be able to get a good night's sleep afterward.

After paying for my drink, I went back to the employee's lounge and took a sip from the can before placing it inside the door of the mini-fridge. My eyes popped open and I started to feel a little bit tingly inside, and I felt like I could take on anything. If one sip could do this much, then I wondered how much energy I would get from taking the can all at once.

I was assigned floor duty again, which now included cleaning up spills. Sybil gave me a large bucket and one of those fancy hands-free mops and pointed me toward the soda and juice aisles.

I liked this mop because I could just push the handle to wring out all the excess liquid without touching it. The only problem was that it still left little droplets on the floor that were easy to slip on, requiring us to put down signs to guide people away from the spill area. I started thinking about what I could do if I were allowed to bring my magic wand to work. If I knew how to do so, I could try to scoop up each puddle of liquid I found and shape it so that it fit as neatly in the bucket as possible without splashing all over the place. Couple that with a drying or a wind spell, and barely anyone would notice that anything ever spilled there. Why hadn't I thought of anything like this before?

After buying some fried chicken wings from the hot food section, I went back to the break room feeling groggy. The effect of the Quick-Burst was starting to wear off. I finished off the can and started feeling like myself again, but it didn't exactly go well with the wings. Maybe I should have just bought a regular bottle of juice instead.

Back on the floor, I ran into Randy in the dairy aisle. He was leaning against a shopping cart with a few boxes of cereal and some cleaning supplies in it, and a black windbreaker jacket stuffed in the baby seat. His orange Sharonia Zoom T-shirt showed off a set of toned muscles, and his bushy red beard was almost impossible to miss. I saw him grimace a couple of times when he stepped forward with his right leg. It looked like he still had a ways to go with his injury recovery.

"Hey, Randy," I said. "It's been a while. How are you feeling?"

"I'm getting there," he said, trying to keep his crutches from falling off the side of his cart. I hurried to pick them up when it was clear he couldn't bend down to catch them. "I just came to pick up a few things for the house. What have you been up to lately, Deanna?"

"It's, uh...it's been a pretty wild week for me, to say the least."

I pulled my right glove off just enough to reveal my enchanter's sign to Randy and keep it hidden from everyone else. His pained reaction was about what I expected.

"Ooh...wow! You should probably get that checked out," he said.

"I already did," I replied.

He leaned in to look a little closer. "What are those pink lines doing there?"

I looked down at my hand to see what Randy was talking about. My sign had turned pink again, just like it did at the Blank Scroll. I still didn't know what was happening, so I couldn't give him a straight answer.

"The short version of the story is--" I leaned in and whispered in his ear "--I can use magic now."

"Really? Huh."

It sounded like he expected me to say something like that. I didn't expect  _ him _ to be so readily accepting of it - or tolerating, at least - right away.

"So, anyway," he said, not even stopping to offer his opinion on the subject, "I talked to Clark about my upcoming schedule, and it looks like I'll be back at work on Friday."

"That's great, but… shouldn't you wait until your ankle fully heals before you come back to work?"

"It'll be fine, trust me. I'll just sit on one of those stools like Corey does."

He gave me one of those half-smiles that said "I'm glad to be back, but I really wish I could relax for a couple more days." Still, it was nice to see that he wasn't feeling down about injuring himself in a pick-up basketball game.

I had to excuse myself and get back on the sales floor before I fell behind on my cleaning.

"It was nice seeing you again," Randy said. "Maybe next week they'll put us in a unit together, and you can show me some of that 'Deanna magic'."

"Yeah...that'd be great," I said, unsure whether he was talking about my bagging skills or actual "magic".

When my shift ended and Dad came to pick me up, I was ready to crash for the night. The lines on my hand stopped glowing the moment I left the store, and I still wanted to figure out why.

* * *

 

The next morning, I woke up an hour later than normal, probably as a side effect of my Quick-Burst crash. I consulted my  _ Simple Spells _ book to see if it could tell me anything about that weird pink glow, but I didn't learn anything new. Perhaps it was a bit too much to expect a spellbook for beginners to touch on such a topic.

An extensive internet search gave me a little more information, linking me to an experimental security system called SCRB, which was short for " **S** pell  **C** ontainment and  **R** eduction  **B** oundary" and pronounced just like the word "scrub". According to the website's product description, it was designed to protect against "surprise magical intrusions" by absorbing and nullifying up to 99% of all hostile magical energy in a given area. Allegedly, if someone tried to burst into a protected room and use a magic wand to set the room on fire, the system would cause the fire to fizzle out in a second. That sounded cool and all, but where would all that excess energy go after the spell was used?

After finishing my breakfast, I called Sol and asked her if she could come to Emerson Park before I went to work and before she had to take her dance classes.

"I'd love to!" she said. "It's been a while since I was able to get out of the house and do anything fun, anyway."

"Oh, and bring your wand, too, if you can."

"Sure thing!"

I looked out the living room window and saw that the weather was perfect for a walk, so I went back upstairs to change into a loose-fitting T-shirt and jeans and put my wand and spellbook in a bag.

When I went back downstairs, Dad noticed me and stopped short of exiting the front door. "Morning, Didi. Where are you headed off to this early in the day?"

"To the park," I said, holding my wand case and spellbook together. "I'm going to hang out with Marisol for a couple of hours. Is that okay?"

"As long as you remember to lock up after you leave," Mom said, "and you get back in time to get dressed for work."

"Don't worry, I won't forget. Have a good day, you guys!"

I gave Mom and Dad a hug and waited for them to leave before heading out of the house myself.

* * *

 

When I got to the park, I found that the ground was still a bit muddy and squishy from the previous days' rain. I took a seat on one of the benches and tapped the ground in front of me a couple of times to find a safe spot to rest my feet. If I were a few inches taller, I would have tried to see if I could stretch my legs from the bench to the crosswalk.

Sol arrived a few minutes after I sat down, carrying her wand and spellbook in her right hand and a half-full bottle of water in her left hand. She wasn't sweating or panting heavily, so I guessed she only had it with her in case she got thirsty. I scooted over to my right to give her some room to sit down.

"Hey there," she said. "What possessed you to want to come back to this park? Hmm?"

"Well, it's a nice day out, and I haven't had a chance to practice away from home," I said. "Picking up and moving around stuff in my bedroom got old after a while."

"No kidding. By the way, I saw your name in the paper yesterday."

Sol smiled at me. It wasn't a teasing, mischievous smile like the day she made me fix that wand. It looked like she was genuinely happy.

"That was pretty gutsy of you to go out into the storm like that. I don't think I would have been able to do the same thing."

"You never really know whether or not you can unless you're left with no choice," I said. I didn't really know how true it was. It just sounded like the right thing to say.

Sol got up from the bench and stretched her arms upward as high as she possibly could. I thought she was preparing to do her magic recharge dance, but she took one look at her wand and sat back down, figuring she already had enough energy to cast spells.

"Hey, Sol… may I ask you something?"

She turned around to face me, lowering her wand to the side. "Yeah, sure. Go ahead."

"How did you first get into magic?"

"Let's see…" Sol stopped for a moment and pressed her left hand to her forehead, reminding me of a contestant trying to answer the final question on almost every quiz show I'd ever seen. "I think it was about two years ago after I'd come home from junior prom. Me, my mom, and my brother Caleb went to this big stage show to see Deuce Clover."

Deuce Clover - I'd heard his name on television a few times before, but I'd never seen one of his shows, either in person or on TV.

"So Deuce was on stage doing his usual magician stuff," she continued, as if I was supposed to know what his 'usual magician stuff' was. "Then about halfway through the show, he started ramping things up steadily. Shuffling playing cards, tossing them back and forth in his hands, making them disappear, throwing them into the air and setting them on  _ fire _ , disappearing from the stage and reappearing in the crowd, switching places with random audience members…"

Sol got more and more excited as she kept talking about how awesome Deuce was, describing each of his feats with dizzying speed. I had trouble keeping up with trying to imagine him performing so many tricks that fast. Then again, with everything I was just learning about magic and witchcraft, an expert magic user probably could do all that in a short time frame like it was nothing.

"And then, for his last trick, he waved his wand around a bit, tapped his shoes a couple of times, and then he started floating - no, hovering - several feet above the stage! It was one of the most awesome things I'd ever seen!"

"Wow! That does sound amazing," I said.

"Unfortunately, that turned out to be his last show. He retired after that, saying there was no way he could top what he just did. Seeing him pull off those tricks and having the crowd eating out of his hands...that was when I knew I wanted to learn how to use magic. I wanted to amaze and entertain people by doing things that few humans could ever dream of doing."

Most of the things Sol described sounded like standard magician tricks, but the floating bit at the end was definitely the mark of a wizard. From her account, Deuce was the kind of guy who liked to mix up regular stage magic with wizard magic to keep his audiences on their toes - and more importantly, to get his audiences to guess the difference between the two. An over-the-top stunt like flying off the stage was the perfect capper to a career predicated on flashy stunts and tricks. I would have liked to figure out how he pulled that last one off without extensive stage help.

"What about the dancing?" I asked. "Is that going to be part of your act?"

"I wasn't planning on it," she said, "but it could be. I just really like dancing."

"Oh."

We decided to test one another on the spells we had learned since visiting the Blank Scroll. Sol had no trouble casting the spells from her original notes without looking at her spellbook. I had to check my book first to remind myself how they worked, but I was able to get it again when Sol randomly challenged me to pick up and then catch a cluster of pebbles without touching them.

Sol turned to me and held her wand over the pile of pebbles in my hand. "Want to see something cool?" she asked.

"That depends. Where are you going with this?"

"You'll see. Just hold still for a moment."

I tried not to move while she waved her wand and her free hand over the pebbles. After a few repetitions, she drew a pattern in the air that I didn't recognize, and then shot a white energy bolt at my hands, causing the pebbles to vanish before our eyes. Even though they were invisible, I could still feel their weight.

"What do you think? Pretty cool, huh?" she asked, smiling at me like she'd just pulled off the most amazing prank. "With this spell, I can hide any number of small objects."

"How do you make them reappear?" I asked back.

Sol took a few steps back toward one of the bushes and beckoned for me. "Go ahead and throw one of those at me."

I looked around and saw a few young boys and girls watching us. I knew it wasn't my place to stop them, but I thought they really should have been in school. The boys were pumping their arms up and down, expecting a fight. I wasn't going to give them one.

"Come on, Sol...seriously?" I said. "There has to be an easier way."

"What? I was going to see if I could catch it," Sol responded. "You didn't think I was going to actually let you hit me, did you?"

Against my better judgment, I grabbed one of the invisible rocks and tossed it at her outstretched hand. I must have misjudged its flight path, because a spark flashed around Sol's right index and middle fingers, bringing the pebble back into view. "A little lower!" she called.

After giving Sol a moment to recover, I threw another pebble at her. "Got it!" she cheered as the second pebble sparked back into view after finding its target.

"Nice catch!" I said. "Let's try something different now. Heads up!"

I stood in a spot where I could clearly see the sky, away from any trees or buildings. The kids who were watching us earlier had left, so we were now just throwing rocks around for our own amusement. I tossed another pebble upward as hard as I could, waiting to see when and where it would reappear. After staring into the air for a couple of seconds and nothing happening, I noticed the pebble I'd thrown standing just a few feet in front of me.

It seemed that all it took to reveal a magically hidden object was for it to hit something. To confirm this theory, I dropped a few more pebbles from my hand, and they all popped into view upon hitting the ground. I had to purposely throw one at my feet to get it to make that telltale "hit spark" that appeared when Sol caught the second one.

"What were you doing just now?" Sol asked.

"Research," I said, discreetly slipping one of the remaining pebbles into my pocket.

We both put our wands away, deciding that we'd done enough spellcasting for the time being.

"I'm getting hungry," Sol said. "Want to grab a snack or something?"

"Yeah. I could really use one myself."

* * *

 

I walked with Sol to Ada's, checking my hand a couple of times along the way to see if her invisibility spell, helpfully called "Hide" by the  _ Simple Spells _ book, was still working. I could still feel the pebble in my hand, even though neither of us could see it. When we passed through the sliding doors and into the general store area, I felt two quick jolts - one in my pocket, and another in the hand where I was carrying my pebbles.

"Are you okay, Deanna?" Sol asked.

"I'm fine. I really wasn't expecting anything like that--"

When I looked down at my hand, I could see the pebbles again. The one in my pocket had also suddenly reappeared.

"Hey, Sol...these rocks were invisible a minute ago, weren't they?"

Sol looked at me with disbelief. "Yeah. So?"

"But once we entered the store, they appeared again."

"Maybe the spell wore off."

"I don't know about that. Let me see your hands for a minute."

Just like my palm symbol the night before, Sol's cloud thumbprints glowed pink around the edges. She wondered what this had to do with the pebbles magically reappearing, so I asked her to go outside and cast "Hide" on them again. When she stepped back inside, she felt the same jolt of pain in her hand that I did, followed by the pebbles popping back into view.

It looked like Ada's was protected by a large anti-magic field. Assuming that this was the SCRB system I read about earlier, it also had the power to nullify outside enchantments as well as any attempts to use magic by anyone standing inside. I could understand a large chain like Ada's wanting to take measures to protect its assets from all possible threats, but why would the Blank Scroll, a small store in a remote part of town whose very existence depended on the sale of magical goods, need something like that?

"That really hurt, you know," Sol said, clutching and rubbing her hand.

"Sorry," I said as I took the now-visible pebbles and put them back in my pocket. "As I was trying to say, I wasn't expecting anything like that to happen. At least now we know that we'll have to be careful where we take enchanted objects."

"That much is obvious. Our wands are still safe, though, right?"

"They should be. I mean, all those wands at the Scroll didn't blow up, did they?"

Sol shook her head. She probably realized that the Blank Scroll was also using SCRB technology, but like me, wasn't sure why.

We went straight for one of the express checkout lanes near the entrance. There was a sale on cranberry granola bars, so we each bought a pair for ourselves. I took a bite out of one of mine on the way out. It wasn't the most filling of snacks, but it tasted delicious, and that was all that really mattered.

"Have you thought about signing up for Lillian's summer class yet, Sol?" I asked.

"Yeah," she said, turning away from me slightly, "but I don't think I'd be able to afford to ride out there every week."

I almost forgot about the hidden transportation costs. She'd have to pay for bus tokens on top of the weekly attendance fee. At $4.50 for a round trip for up to three days, that cost would add up quickly.

"It's okay, though. I'll just keep studying and practicing on my own between dance classes."

"But wouldn't you rather have a study partner to share your ideas with?"

"You're the only other witch I know personally. I guess I could try asking around, but that's going to be super awkward. 'Hi, there! Want to study magic with me?' 'Uh, who the hell are you?'"

Sol had a point. Not being able to get into Lillian's class would hurt her chances to expand her social circle, and going around asking strangers if they were also witches or wizards would invite no shortage of dirty looks, even if they really did know magic. Assuming I made it past Try-Out Thursday, I had to be careful not to embarrass myself in front of the other students if I wanted to make it through the summer.

It was almost time for lunch, so we decided to split up and go back to our homes.

"Want to meet up at my place next time?" Sol asked. "Mom and I should be free this weekend."

"Yeah, I wouldn't mind," I said. "You sure your mom's going to be okay with you inviting us over without her permission?"

"I told you, we should be free this weekend. I think Mom would want us to get it over with sooner rather than later."

"You're probably right. I'll see you later! I had a lot of fun today...well, except for the rocks-exploding-in-my-hand part."

Sol laughed. "Me too. Later, Deanna!"

On my way back to my house, I wondered what Sol's apartment was like. It must not have been very big if Sol had to come to Emerson Park every time she wanted to do anything magical. It wouldn't have surprised me if parts of it were also protected by SCRB, thus giving her an excuse to go outside every once in a while. I took the pebbles out of my pocket and scattered them among the grass near the sidewalk. I didn't need them anymore, and I didn't want to risk experiencing any side effects by holding them onto them after they were robbed of their enchantment.


	14. What Lies Ahead?

That afternoon before I had to go to work, I received an email from the Silverthorne School telling me that they received my application, and that I was scheduled to visit the campus next Thursday at nine o'clock in the morning. The closest bus stop was on the intersection of Lord Avenue and King Boulevard, followed by a five-minute walk just to get to the building. I didn't understand why there wasn't a bus route that led directly to it like most schools did.

When I got to work, I saw that Sybil had already posted the schedules for next week. Instead of my usual three days of work per week, I was disappointed to find out that I was given just one: Thursday morning. I thought I was doing well after that mishap in the store last week, but the managers' decision to limit my hours didn't seem to agree with my own assessment. I went to Sybil's office during my break to figure out the reason for the change.

"We just hired two new cashiers recently," she explained, "and we want to try to get them accustomed to our systems as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, since they're going to be working three days a week, I had to cut back on hours for some of the older guys to make room."

"But why am I only getting one day?" I asked.

Sybil sat down in her chair, making a quiet grunting noise when she landed. "I was going to put you on for Wednesday and Thursday again until I remembered you're already doing those days this week, so I struck you off the list for Wednesday night."

While the notion of working back-to-back shifts with only a few hours of rest made me even more uneasy than night shifts already did, I silently thanked Sybil and the other managers for not following through with it. It still didn't alleviate the fact that I was going to make less money this time around, or that my only scheduled shift coincided with my Try-Out Thursday appointment.

"Is there a chance I could switch with someone for Thursday? I've got an appointment that morning."

"What kind of appointment?" Sybil asked.

"I'm going uptown to visit a school."

"Really? Which school is it?"

"Silverthorne School."

Sybil shook her head. "Never heard of it. Do you have any proof?"

I felt stupid for not printing out my pre-registration letter. I didn't think Sybil would ask me about it since Silverthorne wasn't a traditional college, university, or trade school. She frowned at me while I wasted a minute searching for the email message on my phone, and then showing her a picture of the school building itself to prove to her that the place was real.

"Oh, I get it now," she said as she continued to browse on my phone.

"Get what, Sybil? What are you talking about?"

She turned around and showed me one of Lillian's pictures from the school's website. Lillian was wearing her cobalt blue cloak and smiling like she was posing for a mall photo booth camera. "I recognize that lady. She was standing in line in front of our would-be shoplifter last week. I thought she was a little weird, but had no idea she had her own school. You going to study magic or something, Deanna?"

"Sort of. I actually started on my own last week."

"Good for you." Sybil stopped frowning, but her mouth didn't form a full smile, either. "Personally, I've got no use for any of it, but if you think it'll work out for you, you can go ahead and try it. I still need to know what your schedule is going to be like after this visiting day of yours, or whatever, is done. Got it?"

"Yes, Sybil."

After we finished our discussion, Sybil sent me to the registers to work alongside Corey. I was able to convince him to exchange his Friday morning shift for my Thursday morning shift, but he didn't seem too happy about it. Whenever I tried to look at him, he turned the other way.

"Come on, Corey!" I pleaded. "I just need you to do this one favor for me. I won't ask you for anything for the rest of the year. Promise."

Corey groaned and turned toward the cash register once customers started lining up. "All right, but just so you know, you owe me for this," he said. "I was really looking forward to getting Thursday off, too."

Despite our disagreements over our new shift times, we both managed to get our work done with only a few mistakes. The last thing I wanted was to be put back on stocking duty as punishment for not paying attention to my work.

We switched roles after our scheduled breaks, with Corey acting as the bagger while I sat down at the register. There were so many buttons to keep track of on the touch screen monitor, but it was easier than I thought it would be since the screen only showed me the actions I needed for the moment. I could only imagine how confusing it must have been for cashiers to monitor registers that were more or less specialized computer keyboards back in the day.

When Mom and Dad came to pick me up, I told them about next week's schedule, Try-Out Thursday, and Sol's invitation to her and Lydia's apartment. Mom responded to the last one with a knowing nod. "Marisol's mother called me up at work to tell me about it," she said.

I wondered who came up with the idea first. Did Sol do it, or had her mother already planned to send the invitation and Sol was so excited that she couldn't wait to tell me?

"What time did they say?" I asked.

"Around noon, I believe."

That gave me plenty of time to think of a gift to present to them when we arrived. Another painting sounded like a good idea, but I needed to replace my brushes and replenish my paints first. I could have also gone with a statue or something small that might look good on a windowsill or coffee table. Nothing too fancy or expensive. It was only our first visit, after all.

* * *

My Thursday shift was more of the same. This time I got paired with a middle-aged man named Shannon Dale. I had never worked with him before, but I had seen him and his three kids several times before. Apparently, he and his family liked to shop at this store a lot, and he had applied to this store one day because he was looking for something to do between jobs. He wasn't one of the "new cashiers" Sybil told me about; he started about two months after I did.

When I went home and went to sleep for the night, I started thinking about my schedule for the end of the spring season.

Visiting Sol and Lydia's apartment. Getting ready for Try-Out Thursday. Preparing to study at Lillian's school.

These thoughts started to blend together after a few hours, and suddenly I dreamed that I was in some apartment that may or may not have been Sol's, but Lillian was also there, and she was sizing me, Sol, and a dozen of other colorfully-dressed young men and women up to measure our magical aptitude. Lillian was flanked by two people in identically-colored cloaks. I couldn't tell who they were because their faces were so well-hidden. All I could see when I looked at their faces was blackness.

One by one, they scanned and probed us, beckoning half of us to stand by their side. I was the second-to-last person selected. The whole thing gave me the creeps. None of them said a word to anyone the whole time...not even Lillian, whom I remembered to be very talkative. Before I could ask Lillian or the cloaked figures what was going on, one of them raised their hands and waved toward everyone standing on the other side.

A pulse of energy radiated from the cloaked one's fingers, sending Sol and the others flying through the wall behind them.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to shout an unending string of curses at the cloaked figures for their unprovoked attack. I wanted to yell at Lillian for not doing anything to stop them.

No matter how hard I tried, the words just wouldn't come out. All I could do was stand by and watch Sol and the other bystanders get tossed through the wall like human wrecking balls. When I tried to reach out to save her, the cloaked figures held their free arms out to hold me back.

They turned around and waved their hands again, lifting all of the debris into a swirling vortex and repairing the damaged walls as if nothing ever happened. Just like that, everyone standing on the other side of the line had vanished, shoved off into the unknown.

The cloaked figures led the rest of us to an unmarked wooden door along the opposite wall. It was cracked open just enough to obscure what was behind it from where we were standing. Any attempt to peek around the door was met with a punch to the back of the head.

My head was spinning by the time my turn came up. There was supposed to be another room behind that door, but all I saw was a dark, colorless void, like the space under the cloaked figures' hoods. I didn't want to know what was beyond the darkness anymore. I just closed my eyes, braced myself, and hoped for them to get it over with already.

A hard shove from behind propelled me into the void. There was nothing for me to stand on or reach out to - just the frightening sensation of falling into a bottomless pit, unable to scream or determine which way was up.

I opened my eyes in a vain attempt to make sense of things. I still couldn't see anything around me, I couldn't breathe, and my arms and legs were flailing around on their own. Eventually, I stopped moving, giving me a chance to push myself up and catch my breath.

I could see the contours of a pillow, and the ground beneath me was springy and a little stiff. That was when I realized I was in a bedroom. _My_ bedroom, to be exact.

It seemed that I had turned face-first onto my pillow during that nightmare. I imagined it would have been a lot shorter if I had rested on my side or back, like I usually did. I almost didn't want to go back to sleep after all that. I did _not_ want to get sucked back into that dream to find out what happened when I finally hit bottom. Despite my best efforts, drowsiness won out, and I was back to dreamland after a few minutes.

When I woke up, I could still see those faceless hooded figures when I closed my eyes. Normally, I would have ignored bad dreams like that and gone on with my day, but this one left me with so many questions.

Who were those people standing with Lillian? What was Sol doing there when she told me she wasn't going to attend the auditions? Why did they blast her through that wall? That didn't look like any magic I'd ever seen. They weren't even using magic wands. Would I be able to learn magic that powerful by taking this course? What would I do if someone tried to use a spell or power like that on me?

These were not questions I wanted to ask myself on my day off.


	15. We Shall Come Bearing Gifts

After sitting down and eating most of the pancakes Dad cooked for us, I found myself back at my sketchbook drawing pictures of the figures I saw in my dream. Trying to talk about it directly to them didn't do me any good because I still couldn't figure out what it meant, or even if it  _ was _ supposed to mean anything at all. At least now I had another way to visualize those dream creatures so that they wouldn't be stuck in the back of my head all day.

"You gonna finish these, Didi?" Dad asked as he picked up the plates in the dining room.

"Nah. I think I've had enough," I said.

"Okay, then. Guess I'll take 'em."

I watched him pick up a few of the smaller pancake bits from my plate and eat them on his way to the kitchen. It was impressive how he was able to do that without dropping anything.

"By the way, Didi, we're thinking of going out after work to get gifts for Sol and her mother," he said after washing the dishes. "Do you want to come along?"

"Sure!" I said, perking up for the first time this morning. "Where are we going, exactly?"

"We haven't decided yet," Mom said, "but we'll talk about it more when we get home."

No matter where we ended up going, I was looking forward to venturing out of town again as long as it didn't mean going back to St. Gabriel.

After Mom and Dad left for work, I decided to get started on a new painting using what little paint I had left. With my hours being reduced for the week and my need to secure funding for whatever tuition I'd need to pay, I knew I had to get started on something quickly.

When I started painting the hood of the mysterious cloaked figure, I painted it purple instead of blue just in case anyone who saw it thought I was trying to make Lillian look scary. I didn't get very far into it before my red paint ran out. I wrote down a reminder to myself to ask Dad if we could take a detour to Angelo's on the way home from our shopping trip.

After another hour of studying from my spellbook and refining some of the spells I already knew, I went out for a walk around Emerson Park and the corner store a couple of times. The area around the park got more crowded on my second lap, so I knew that if I needed to go out and practice on my own, I would have to do so earlier in the morning when there weren't as many people watching.

When I stopped inside Cherry's, the store was livelier than I'd ever seen it. Okay, so maybe calling eight customers in one room at one time "livelier than ever" was pushing it, but it was a small corner store. Mr. Cherry looked like he was happy to have all the traffic.

Much of the merchandise on display had changed over the last several days. I didn't know how much of that was due to sales thanks to that weird clause in my contract limiting the amount of time an item could remain on the shelves. My Emerson Park painting was hanging on the wall to the left of the front counter. A few people looked at it for a few seconds, but nobody seemed interested in buying it. I wondered what would happen if my painting didn't sell by the seven-day cutoff date. Would the Cherrys send it back to me? Would it get put in a box, stashed away somewhere to be forgotten?

As I looked around to see if I could find something nice to buy for Sol, I spotted Shaniya looking at a pair of clay figures on one of the middle shelves. One was of a boy holding a basket, and the other was of a girl holding a handful of flowers. Neither had any color to them, but they were each sculpted with an amazing amount of detail. Shaniya picked up the boy figure, examined it thoroughly, and then put it back on the shelf.

"Who'd want to buy an ugly little thing like this?" I heard her say as she looked at the statuette with a hint of disgust.

She didn't notice me standing on the other side of the shelf, so I called out to her.

"Oh, hi!" she said. "I remember you. You're the girl from the library. Thanks again for your help."

"It was nothing," I said, even though the spell I used wasn't easy to downplay. "How did your test go?"

Shaniya smiled. "Pretty good. I got an 84."

"That's great!"

She thanked me and turned back toward the shelf to look at a glass bowl with a floral pattern painted around the rim. It was on one of the lower shelves, so she had to kneel to get a close look at it.

"What's up with these paint streaks?" she asked. "It almost looks like those flowers are... _ bleeding _ ."

I looked down at the bowl to see what Shaniya was looking at. There were trails of red falling off some of the roses, and a few streaks of yellow-orange running off the marigolds on the opposite side. The little colored bulbs at the bottom of some of the streaks suggested that they weren't put there for artistic effect. I was afraid of touching the bowl and smudging it up.

"Eh, whatever… I'm not here on a shopping trip. I'm here to see Elias."

Shaniya went to the front counter and asked Mr. Cherry if his son was available. He didn't waste any time in calling Elias down, although it took Elias a few minutes to get to the front counter from whatever he was doing. From the outside, it looked like there were three floors to the store building, so I figured he was upstairs playing video games or something.

Elias came out from behind the counter to give Shaniya a hug and a kiss, holding it for a few seconds longer than I thought they should, considering how busy the store was at the time. I waited a few minutes for them to talk among themselves before approaching.

"Hey, Elias," I said. "How did  _ you _ do on your test?"

"I did all right," he said, bringing his voice down to almost a mumble. "I passed, at least."

"Way to go! You don't seem too happy about that, though."

"I don't want to talk about it."

I quickly changed the subject to try to lift Elias' spirits. Without knowing how well he was doing in school overall, or even what other classes he was taking, I didn't want to give him any advice that would hurt his academic prospects.

"So, uh, I'm visiting a friend's house for the first time this weekend," I said, "and I was wondering what kind of gift I should get for them."

"You can never go wrong with homemade baked goods," Shaniya said. "When Elias and I first started dating, he brought me these cute little moon- and star-shaped sugar cookies. We sat on my front porch and ate the whole bag together. They were so delicious… I had no idea he was so good at baking!"

"Well… Dad did most of the work," Elias admitted. "The moon and star shapes were my ideas, though."

Shaniya wasn't amused by my snickering. I couldn't help myself. It sounded like such an odd thing to say. If I was in his shoes, I would have lied and said I did it all. Then again, baking some cookies sounded like a good idea, assuming we still had enough ingredients from Mom's last batch.

"Why not do a special painting?" Elias asked. "You're good at that!"

"I thought about it," I said, "but I already made one for when they came to my house. Besides, I need to go pick up some paint later on, anyway. Is there anything I could get in here that you might recommend?"

"I don't know how much I can help unless I know more about this friend of yours. Do they like any of this artsy stuff?"

I'd only seen Sol come to Cherry's once. She didn't really take interest in any of the items around her when we met that day. It was possible, although highly doubtful, that she liked to visit Cherry's between magic practice sessions and dance lessons. It was also possible that she already had a bunch of painted dolls or fancy blown glass figures on shelves in her room. I found myself in an annoying paradox - wanting to surprise a friend with a nice gift, but not wanting to ask her about her interests and spoil the surprise. I could have picked anything out from the shelves and hoped for the best, including that "bleeding flower" bowl. If she didn't like it, the worst I could expect to happen was that I would be forced to keep it for myself. Cherry's didn't look like the kind of store that offered refunds.

"I'm not really sure," I said after looking around at everything. "Maybe I'll just get her a CD and be done with it."

Elias looked at me and shrugged. "I guess you could do that, too."

I didn't want to leave the store empty-handed, so I went ahead and bought the boy and girl figurines. If Sol didn't like them, then at least I'd have something to put on my windowsill.

* * *

 

While I waited for Mom and Dad to get home, I sat on the couch in my living room and tried to relax. It was just soft enough to sit down and meditate on, but the temptation to kick off my shoes and fall asleep was too great. I told myself I only needed a few minutes. When I woke up, the afternoon news had ended and I hadn't eaten lunch yet. On the bright side, I hadn't seen any of the creepy cloaked people in my daydreams.

It wasn't easy for me to go back to working on sketches when I had an unfinished painting waiting upstairs. Pencil and ink drawings were easier and cost less to produce, but they weren't as easy to sell. You couldn't really hang a cool-looking paper drawing on your wall unless you found a decent frame for it. One of these days, I was going to need to invest in a scanner to digitize some of these sketches so I could post and sell them online.

Dad came home a little later than usual. He told me he stopped at the gas station on the way home to fill up for our shopping trip.

When Mom got home from the library, we all gathered around the couch to watch television. I tried not to get too comfortable knowing we were about to leave at any moment.

"Where are we going?" I asked.

"Down to Mucci's Mall in Marble Borough," Mom said. "We haven't been down there in months. It's the closest mall we can go to ever since Wishing Well got torn down last year."

"Wishing Well? Wasn't that the one with the video arcade that was almost as big as the food court?" I sighed as I recalled visiting that arcade on my 14th birthday and spending six dollars in quarters trying to beat the final boss of  _ Smash Arena _ before one of the local tournament players challenged me and interrupted my run. "I kinda miss that place."

"Yeah. Mucci's doesn't have anything like that," Dad said, "but they've got better food. Do you want to get some pizza or a burger while we're there? I'm not really in the mood for cooking."

"How about some seafood?" I suggested. "I'd like to try something a little different."

"Actually, a burger doesn't sound half-bad," Mom said.

"We'll see if we can hit both of those restaurants while we're out. Ready, ladies?"

"You bet!" I cheered.

"Of course!" Mom said.

* * *

 

The ride into Marble Borough didn't feel like it took as long as it did to get to St. Gabriel. It helped that there were more roads to travel along so that all the traffic wasn't funneled into one street or highway. The scenery in St. Gabriel and the surrounding areas was more awe-inspiring due to it being a much bigger city than Sharonia, but there was something charming about the way the houses in Marble Borough lined up, and how some of them had freshly-cut lawns lined with stones and those little pinwheel ornaments.

When we got to Mucci's, the parking lot was only half-full. Despite that, finding a good parking space was hard because most of the parked cars were concentrated closest to the three main entrances. We walked toward the big revolving door in the center, hoping it would help us remember where we parked once we were finished.

The emptiness in the parking lot was deceiving, as it looked like there were plenty of people walking around the two-story mall. A few of them gathered around the giant three-tiered fountain in the center, flicking pennies into it to make wishes.

Just to my right, there was a rectangular pillar with the layout of the mall printed on the face closest to the door. The simple, boomerang-shaped layout made it hard for anyone to get lost. We each took a paper map to help us locate all of the shops, and agreed to end our night by visiting the food court on the east wing.

Our first stop was Heart of Glass, a store that sold all types of drinking glasses and glass sculptures, from the tallest wine glass to the shortest shot glass. I couldn't believe there was a market for a specialty store like this, where an earthquake or a loud enough sound or an errant baseball could wipe out one's inventory in seconds. Mom and Dad picked out a drinking set that included three regular glasses, two wine glasses, and one for making margaritas. It was obvious they had Lydia in mind with that set since Sol was still about two years away from the legal drinking age. I saw a pair of glass birds in a cage that looked like they would have made a nice car ornament, but I didn't buy it because I already knew what I was going to buy for Sol.

After that, we took a leisurely stroll around the west wing of the mall, past the Knowles department store on the end, and into Orange Records. In an age where it was easy to download and stream songs onto a computer with a single click, Orange Records still saw a lot of young visitors. It helped that there were booths around the store that let customers listen to 30-second snippets of songs from an album to decide if they were worth buying. I went to one of the listening booths and sampled a few tracks from  _ St. Nina, _ the newest album from Ashlynn Franks. Dance-pop wasn't really my thing, but those songs were incredibly catchy. I had to resist the urge to sing along and embarrass myself.

I ultimately took two copies of  _ St. Nina _ with me to the counter. My goal wasn't to study the album the same way I did with my  _ Simple Spells _ book. It was just to give me something to listen to whenever I  _ wasn't _ studying. When I paid for the albums and told the clerk I was buying them for a friend, she gave me a teasing wink. " _ Sure _ , you are," she said, unbuckling one of the straps on her Orange Records apron to reveal an Ashlynn Franks concert T-shirt. "You don't have to be shy about being an Ashlynn fan!"

"This is just my first Ashlynn album, though," I tried to explain.

"Betcha it won't be your last!"

Unfortunately, the clerk's cheeriness didn't rub off on me. I wanted to get out of there and move on.

We continued touring the east wing of the mall, deciding to save our visit to the second floor for another day since we already did everything we wanted to do. As we got closer to the food court, I saw two young men walking away from a small store carrying wand cases in their hands. The woman standing behind them appeared to be locking up the store for the night. It was only six o'clock, and the mall at large didn't close until ten, according to the map. When I peered through the metal gates to see what she was selling, I understood why - she was running a magic shop just like the Blank Scroll. Every shelf was filled with scrolls, wands, spellbooks, beakers, and potion ingredients. There was no doubt in my mind that she wanted to close early - or the mall security team made her do it - to prevent the rowdier late-night crowd from ransacking the place.

The food court was probably the most crowded area in the mall. It was right around dinnertime for most of the locals, so we had to wait in long lines to get our food. I picked up some grilled shrimp skewers from the seafood store, and Mom and Dad both bought cheeseburgers from Burger Barn. We picked an empty table around the outer rim of the eating area, giving us just enough room to eat our meals and compare our hauls.

"What did you wind up getting for Marisol?" Dad asked.

"An Ashlynn CD," I said.

"Good choice! That sounds like something she might like. What about her mother?"

"I didn't buy anything for her. I gave her that painting that one time. Remember?"

"Technically, it was a painting of your friend and her mother wanted to buy it from you," Dad reminded me.

"Her mom said she liked it, though."

I looked down at Mom's feet and saw a pair of bags from a store I didn't remember visiting. "What's in those bags?" I asked after taking the last bite from one of my skewers.

"Oh, just some snacks and things," Mom said.

"More cookies, huh?"

"Of course! I bought enough for everybody - us  _ and _ Marisol's family." Mom put down her burger and reached into one of the unmarked bags by her feet, pulling out two containers' worth of assorted cookies. "And there's so much variety in these packs! Chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin, ginger snap, sugar…"

Mom seemed a lot more excited about the cookies than she did with her cheeseburger. She let Dad have the last quarter of it while she stole away to the bathroom. I went along with her so that I didn't have to complain about needing to pee later.

We took our bags with us to the parking lot, which I swore had twice as many cars in it since we entered. Our car was wedged between a minivan and a pick-up truck, so Dad had to pull out of his spot to give Mom and I enough room to get in. Whoever owned either of those vehicles would probably have been mad at us if we dented them with our doors.

We stopped at Angelo's arts and crafts store in Emiliora, which was about halfway between Marble Borough and Sharonia. I visited this store a lot, so it didn't take me long to find what I needed and get to the register quickly. This time, I got double my usual order of paints and a few extra brushes. I didn't know how many more chances I'd have to come back once summer started.

I hadn't told my parents about my nightmare, but I felt a lot better after getting out of the house. I wasn't sure if I wanted to talk to Sol about it either. All I cared about was whether or not she would like either of the gifts I bought for her.


	16. A Toast

Now that I had a full complement of supplies again, I could continue my painting. My new Ashlynn CD was probably the least fitting music I could listen to while painting a creepy hooded ghost. It didn't really matter, though, because it got me in the mood to paint again, and it was the only CD I had that wasn't borrowed from my parents' collection. Now I wanted to paint a DJ whose music emitted colorful magic waves, or someone listening to music with giant headphones that did the same thing.

Even with my best efforts, I couldn't finish the whole painting, even after sleeping and eating breakfast. The hooded ghost's body was complete, but I still needed to work on the background and special effects. All that would have to wait until after I visited Sol and Lydia.

After going downstairs with my bag of goodies, I asked Sol for her address. She told me that she and her mother were staying at a place called Atlas Gardens, a few blocks south of Emerson Park. It was within walking distance of our house, but Dad insisted that we would drive there, just like Lydia did when she visited us. It looked like it was going to start raining again, anyway.

Mom came downstairs wearing a stunning red-and-orange dress that stretched down to her calves. It was the kind of outfit one would wear to church, but we hadn't gone to a weekend service in two-and-a-half years, shortly after our last pastor retired and we moved to Sharonia. Dad was in the dining room ironing one of his new sky-blue polo shirts. I compared their outfits to mine and realized that my slacks and funny graphic T-shirt weren't going to be good enough. Mom took one look at me and seemed to come to the same conclusion.

"Deanna, you're not going over to Marisol's place wearing  _ that _ , are you?" she asked.

"No," I said. I really wasn't planning on wearing the clothes I had on; I just needed a few moments to wake up before choosing a better outfit.

"I didn't think so. Now go upstairs and change. She may not know you're wearing the same clothes you slept in last night, but I do."

I hurried upstairs to my room to change into something more fashionable. There were a few shirts and blouses in my closet that I hadn't worn in a while. On the far right side, I picked out a brown blouse-and-skirt ensemble that was comfortable without being too flashy or ratty. It took me a few minutes longer than normal to get all the wrinkles out of the skirt. I didn't want to overdo it by pressing too hard on the fabric or turning the iron temperature up too high.  _ That _ would have been embarrassing, walking around with a burnt skirt and everything.

We took our bags of gifts and loaded them into the empty seat in the back of the car. I snuck a peek at one of the cookie boxes, wondering how long it would have taken us to bake them ourselves. They all looked so delicious!

"I hope you're not thinking of eating any of those cookies, Didi," Dad said, nodding toward the rear-view mirror to catch my bug-eyed expression. The moment he caught me, I yanked my hand out of the bag and put it on my lap. "We've got another box at home, and you can eat as many as you want from that one."

"Uh, no! Of course not," I said. "I was just admiring them, that's all."

Instead of continuing to examine the cookies, I double-checked my bag to make sure I brought my wand case with me. It was sitting on top of the  _ St. Nina _ CD, so I lined them both up vertically so that they wouldn't get broken.

We drove all the way to 21st Street where the Atlas Gardens apartment complex was located. With a name like that, I was surprised to see how little greenery there was outside. I thought the place might have been named for the large spherical stone statue next to the equally big "Atlas Gardens" sign, but the statue didn't have any landmasses or mountains carved into it like a real atlas.

The apartments themselves looked no different on the outside from the many row homes around town. The roofs were flat, and the brick siding on most of the buildings appeared to be slowly chipping away. They were neatly lined up in rows of six to ten on either side, each with its own parking lot. I texted Sol again to let her know we had arrived, and she told us to look for apartment 267.

We drove around the complex for a while until we found the 200-block. There were a lot more buildings than I thought there would be. Mom looked in the side-view mirror to check her hair one more time before stepping out of the car, and she let me borrow her comb for a moment so I could fix mine. I started to worry if I was overdressed for the occasion.

We walked up to the 260s building and entered the lobby, which had mailboxes along the left wall arranged in three rows of three boxes each, like a tic-tac-toe board. The mailbox for room 267 was stuffed with bills and junk mail. It didn't look like Sol or her mother had much time to clean it out.

I pressed the button next to the mailbox to activate the intercom. "Hey, Sol! Are you there?"

After a second or two, I heard a few short beeps, and then Sol answered. "Deanna? Is that you?"

"Yeah. My mom and dad are here, too."

"Okay, just sit tight. I'll buzz you guys in."

The large door to our right clicked open. Mom entered through the door first, hoping to get inside before it locked again. I double-checked to make sure it stayed locked after I entered so no one would try to sneak in behind us.

When we entered the main hallway, we saw doors numbering from 261 to 264 from right to left. The only door that wasn't numbered was the one closest to the stairway on the right. I guessed that the unmarked door was supposed to be the building manager's office.

As we went up the stairs, I was reminded of the stairwell at the Blank Scroll. This building had more lights in it, but somehow it felt darker than the one at the Scroll.

The door to room 267 was ajar when we got to the second floor. Sol stuck her head out and waved excitedly to us as we approached.

"Hi! Welcome!" she said as she led us inside. "So glad you could make it. Come on in!"

Sol's apartment was pretty small. The living and dining quarters were one combined room, with a sofa and a folding chair surrounding a small flat-screen TV to our left, and a square wooden table with more folding chairs on the right. Aside from the ceiling lights, the only decorations I saw were a few potted plants near the living room window and my painting of Sol on the wall behind the sofa. They must really have been impressed by it to make it one of the first things people saw when they walked in.

"Where do you want us to sit our bags?" I asked.

"Oh, you can just put them over there somewhere," Sol said, pointing to the plants by the window.

We decided to sit down on the couch and watch TV while we waited for Sol to call for her mother. The TV was tuned to a reality show about a group of friends trying to keep a hole-in-the-wall bar afloat. The so-called friends were arguing with customers about food being too cold or the drinks being watered down. No one looked happy, but I wondered how much of the drama was real and how much of it was being played up for the audience's benefit.

Just before the commercial break, Lydia came out to the main room wearing a loose-fitting T-shirt and white sweatpants with a brown stripe down the side. She didn't look like she was going out for a jog, considering the weather. At least she looked happy and comfortable.

"Val! Pam! Deanna! Hi!" she said, shaking each of our hands. "I hope you didn't have too much trouble finding the apartment."

"No, not at all," Dad said before quickly backtracking. "Well, okay...maybe a little bit."

"I don't blame you. This complex  _ is _ pretty big. It took Marisol and I a while to find this place when we moved in."

Mom picked up two of the bags from the corner and handed them to Lydia. "Here...we got these for you."

Lydia dug through the bag and gave us a big smile when she held up the glass set. "Thanks, you guys," she said cheerfully. "You know, I've been working on a drink that I think you might like. Want me to make one for you?"

After talking it over between each other for a few seconds, Mom and Dad both nodded.

"What about you, Deanna?" Lydia asked. "Would you like some, too?"

"No thanks," I said. "I'm not much of a drinker."

"Don't worry. There's not that much alcohol in this one. I should warn you that it's got a bit of a kick to it, so, uh...be careful how much you drink at a time."

"Well, I guess I could try a little bit, then…but only this once."

"Oh, Lydia!" Mom called out before Lydia had a chance to go to the kitchen. "We brought some cookies, too."

Lydia took the box from Mom and placed it on the table. "Where'd you guys get all this stuff, anyway?"

"There's this place in Mucci's called Serene Thirteen. They make the  _ best _ cookies. Have you ever been down there?"

"To Mucci's? Yeah, maybe once or twice. I don't think I've been to or seen that cookie place, though, so I'll take your word for it."

While Lydia went off to the kitchen to prepare her special drink, I waited for Sol to come out from the back so I could give her my gift bag. She reached into the bag without looking at it, pulling out the Basket Boy and Flower Girl statuettes and examining them thoroughly. I was confused by her taking the same analytical approach to the CD that she did with the little figurines I bought. Maybe I should have asked her what kind of music she liked after all.

"These are kinda cute," she said of the statuettes. "They could use some color, though. Did you make these, Deanna?"

"Ha! I wish," I said, trying not to sound too proud of myself. "If I had a lot of free time and a chisel, I  _ might _ be able to do one of these."

Sol placed the CD on the table next to the cookies, not really paying any attention to it. "What about the CD?" I asked.

"I'll listen to it later," she said. "I've never really listened to any of Ashlynn's stuff before. How good is she?"

"I don't know. I just bought this CD yesterday, so I've only listened to a little bit of it. I got it for you because I thought it might help you with your dancing."

"Not exactly a ringing endorsement, but I'll give it a shot. Thanks, Deanna."

About ten minutes later, Lydia came out of the kitchen carrying four glasses of varying sizes, each filled with what looked like orange juice. Mom and Dad took the regular-sized glasses while Lydia gave me one of the wine glasses, which held less juice but looked more elegant. Sol didn't look too bummed about being left out of the drinking party. She sat down at the dinner table and looked at the rest of us with anticipation. She could also have been looking at the TV to watch the end of that bar show; I couldn't really tell.

"I'd like to propose a toast," Lydia said, raising her glass in the air, its plastic stirring straw rattling against the edges. Sol quickly grabbed the remote and hit the mute button so we could all hear what her mother had to say.

"Not too long ago," Lydia continued, "our daughters met in Emerson Park and bonded through a common interest in magic. Though they took different approaches to their discoveries - Marisol by observing a professional magician, and Deanna by observing Marisol - I believe that they can help each other grow and learn more about this often weird, but sometimes wonderful art. A toast...to the kinship between these two young aspiring witches." 

" _ And _ their parents," Dad added.

"Of course! May the kinship between these two young women also help enrich the relationship between their parents."

We all cheered and tapped our glasses together, encouraged by Lydia's speech. Sol didn't have a glass to raise, so she just raised her fist triumphantly.

Mom and Dad took a sip from their glasses without hesitation. Lydia took a moment to stir her drink before taking a larger sip from it. Meanwhile, I inspected my glass to see if anything weird had been added to it. There had to be a secret ingredient in this drink if Lydia had to warn us about it beforehand.

Dad took another sip from his drink and puckered his lips really hard. "Mmm! That's some good stuff!" he said.

"Mine's a bit gritty," Mom said after sampling hers.

"Try stirring it around a bit," Lydia said. "That should help."

Mom borrowed Lydia's stirring straw and mixed it up a bit more, trying not to spill too much on the floor. I continued to sit there with my untouched drink in my hand, astounded by what was going on. When Mom and Dad would throw parties with the neighbors, or whenever there was a "big game" on, they didn't have fancy drinks or glasses like this. It was just them, the game, the TV, a few beers, and whatever snacks they had on hand.

Mom sipped her drink again, slowly at first, and then drinking almost half of it with one big gulp. She put her glass down and grinned, apparently not finding it as bitter or sour as Dad did. "You're right, Van...this  _ is _ good!" she said. "What's it called?"

"A 'wyvern'," Lydia said.

"That sounds very...exotic. What's in it?" Dad asked.

"Ah ah ah...that's a secret!"

Lydia waved her right finger at Mom and Dad while simultaneously counting down with her left hand hidden from their view. The moment she stopped counting down, Dad patted his chest a couple of times, and Mom started fanning herself. "It's very...spicy," she said, sounding like she was gasping for air.

"That's the 'kick' I told you about," Lydia said. "That's why I told you to drink it slowly." She then looked my way and added, "You still haven't touched your drink, Deanna? Where's your adventurous spirit? If you let that sit too long, it's gonna get warm!"

I noticed tiny puffs of smoke coming from everyone's mouths and nostrils, and that's when I knew Lydia hadn't served us any ordinary drink.

"I think it just did," I said.

Not wanting to be seen as a party pooper, I drank from my glass very slowly to try to avoid the smoking sensation that was sure to come afterward. At first, all I could taste was the orange juice, but as I drank more of it, I started to taste a mix of lemon, something powdery, and another flavor I couldn't really identify. The combination felt smooth going down despite its powdery texture, but once it hit my stomach, it felt like my body temperature shot up by about five degrees.

I quickly and quietly excused myself to go to the bathroom, hoping that I wouldn't throw everything back up. After about a minute of huffing and puffing to get all the smoke out of my system, I drank some tap water to try to cool off. On the bright side, I didn't feel dizzy or woozy or anything, but I sure wasn't going to drink any more of  _ that _ for a while.

"Deanna? You okay in there?"

I opened the bathroom door to see Sol standing a few feet away, holding a bottle of water and a couple of cookies for me to consume. "I'm fine now," I told her after eating one of the sugar cookies. "Thanks."

Sol and I peered into the main room to see what our parents were up to. It looked like they were getting ready to watch another episode of that bar reality TV show, which the title card helpfully referred to as  _ Deep in the Hole. _ Sol didn't look like she was interested in watching the show, so she led me toward her bedroom where we could speak in private.

Sol's bedroom was peculiarly-shaped. It was long and narrow, with her twin-size bed and a single nightstand situated all the way in the back. The space between the bed and the closet was occupied by a flat, pink rug, which I guessed was what Sol used to practice her dance moves.

"This room is really...cozy," I said.

"I know," she lamented. "It's the best we could do with the money Mom makes. Her room is only a little bit bigger than mine."

"Oh? What does she do for a living?"

"She's a bartender."

That certainly explained her choice in TV shows, and why she offered to serve us drinks instead of taking us out to eat.

"Fortunately, the place where she works is a lot cleaner than that crappy Deep in the Hole bar on TV," Sol said. "So at least there's that."

I sat down on the dance mat and found myself looking up at Sol. Her bed was a bit higher up than I thought it was, and it was making me uncomfortable. "Speaking of drinks...what in the world was in that thing your mom gave us, anyway?"

"I didn't see Mom make the whole thing, but I did watch her put one ingredient in at the end, and I think it might be the reason why you and your parents flared up like that."

"What? Is there some kind of super-alcohol mixed in that sets your insides on fire? Who the hell would want to drink that?"

"You'd be surprised," she said half-sarcastically. "No, it's nothing like that."

"Then what is it?"

"I'll give you a hint: it's right there in the name."

Lydia called that drink a "wyvern", which was probably named after those big winged dragons from fantasy novels and video games. The only thing I could think of was that "dragon's breath" powder she bought at the Blank Scroll that day.

"Do you mean that powdery stuff?" I asked.

"Yup," Sol replied. "I overheard Mom talk about a 'hot idea' for a new drink with some of her work friends one night. I didn't think she was actually going to make you guys drink one of her potions!"

"Wait a minute...are you saying that your mother can use magic too?"

"Well...yeah, but it's not the same kind of magic you and I use."

That revelation caught me completely by surprise. I didn't see any magical tattoos or imprints anywhere on Lydia's arms, so she probably didn't own a magic wand. Potion-making didn't look like it required any specialized magic knowledge. All someone needed to do, so I thought, was to find the right ingredients and follow the recipe, just like with regular cooking or drink mixing. If that was her real passion, then working at a bar certainly sounded like the most appropriate cover job to practice making all the potions she wanted.

"Mom was never one for the whole 'wands and spellcasting' aspect of magic," Sol explained. "She liked earning money as a bartender, but she got bored with serving 'normal' drinks and wanted to start making things you couldn't find in most bars. One of these days, she wants to try to serve her concoctions to the public, either by starting her own business or whispering into her boss' ear to let them sell those drinks at happy hour or something."

"Do you think either of us could learn to do that?"

"Maybe, but you'd need another license."

"That sounds kinda dumb," I said, trying to get back on my feet, "but whatever."

At that moment, I heard Mom call out to us from the main room. "Deanna! We're getting ready to leave soon!"

I walked out of Sol's room slowly, as I started to feel a stinging pain in the back of my head. So much for not getting a hangover...

Sol turned around after placing one of her statuettes on top of her radio to check up on me. "Are you sure you're going to be okay, Deanna?"

"I just need a little bit of rest," I said. "I should be fine after that."

"Okay. Give me a call when you get a chance."

"I'll try."

Sol and Lydia escorted us out of the apartment and helped us find our car in the parking lot. "Thanks again for coming over," Lydia said, "and thanks for the gifts. I promise that I'll try to make your next drink a lot less spicy."

Dad laughed. "Don't worry about it. That was probably the most unique drink I've ever had."

Mom looked like she was about to start fanning herself again. "Thank you for inviting us, Lydia," she said. "You're welcome to visit us anytime."

"And you're all always welcome to stop by here if you're in the area. Especially you, Deanna. I'm sure Marisol would love for you to visit every now and then."

"Uh...sure!" I said. "I think we might be able to work something out. This week might be difficult, though."

Sol pouted when she realized I was talking about Tryout Thursday and the practice days leading up to it. "Maybe we could meet up again next weekend," I suggested.

"That would be nice," she said. "Hopefully our schedules will align so that we can meet up earlier next time."

I hugged Sol and Lydia before getting back into the car. I definitely would have liked to return to visit again, as long as I wasn't going to be served anything that would make my head hurt.


	17. Prep Time

Getting out of the Atlas Gardens parking lot was easy, but I figured we'd need to visit a few more times until we got familiar with the layout to get in and out without any issues.

When I got back home, I gave Sol a quick phone call to let her and Lydia know we made it safely. I was too tired to talk about anything else, so I took some pain medicine and drank some water to try to soothe my headache. At least my stomach didn't feel like it was on fire anymore.

I fell asleep for a while, squeezing my pillows against my head as hard as possible. I didn't know if that had made any difference, but it  _ felt _ like it did, and that was all I cared about. The big downside was that I lost a lot of time that I could have used for studying or painting.

After sleeping for what felt like a whole day, I got up and went downstairs to get more information on Lillian and her school. Getting there wasn't going to be much of a problem - all I had to do was ride the bus heading toward the billiard hall and walk a few blocks north until I saw the building from the brochure. What I really wanted to know was how to prepare for the entrance exam. What kinds of questions would I be asked? Would I have to memorize or cast spells for the examiners? Most of the information I found on message boards and other websites only covered general exam prep cases - getting a good night's sleep, eating a healthy breakfast to keep your energy up, and so on. Either no one seemed to know what to do when it came to magic schools, or there were enough people on those boards who knew magic to assume they already passed, and thus didn't need the help. If I was going to make the most of my study time, I figured I would start by taking the plunge and registering for one of those sites to try to get some advice.

After eating some soup for dinner, I signed up for an account on a website called Mystic Answers and posted a welcome topic. I only posted about being relatively new to the world of magic and looking for entrance exam studying tips. I would leave it to the rest of the community to decipher more about the mysterious "WandWithADee" on their own while I tried to think of a study plan for the next couple of days.

I wrote down a basic day plan on a page from my sketchbook, dividing it into rough time blocks for morning, afternoon, evening, and night. The post-dinner hours would be reserved exclusively for studying, leaving the rest of each day wide open as long as the weather held up. The only day I had to worry about was Tuesday, which was also Freedom Day. Dad would be home early from work that day, and Mom didn't have to go at all since the library was going to close for the national holiday. She was sure to ask me to help her do chores around the house. If I had anything I needed to do that required me to travel, I would have to do it either on Monday or Wednesday.

It wasn't easy for me to get to sleep. I thought I was going to have another nightmare after drinking that potion, but if I did, I couldn't recall it after waking up the next morning.

After taking a warm shower and changing my clothes, I almost bumped into Dad on my way downstairs. "Hey, Didi! How are you feeling?" he asked.

I slowly stood up and looked him in the face. He looked like he was starting to grow bags under his eyes, even though he had the least severe reaction to that "wyvern" drink out of all of us. "I feel a little bit better now," I said. "I'm not really used to drinking...especially not drinks like  _ that _ ."

Even in his half-asleep state, Dad couldn't help laughing. "You're not kidding. I thought it was a prank at first, but I figured I'd just roll with it. It felt good to find a new drinking buddy."

Dad followed me as we both went downstairs. We had to keep checking on each other to make sure neither of us fell over on the way to the dining room. I tried to slap myself awake long enough to prepare and enjoy a bowl of raisin bran.

Mom, who was a few sips away from spewing smoke out of every orifice at Lydia's place, looked like the dictionary definition of "good health" compared to us. She strolled into the dining room like she was on a fashion show runway. I wanted to know how she had so much energy and pep after drinking the same amount of alcohol as the rest of us.

"I just got an extra hour of sleep last night," she said to me. "The stomach medicine helped, too, but it tasted  _ awful _ . I should have drunk a glass of milk instead. Hey, that's a good idea! I think I'll get some right now."

Dad and I shrugged at each other. It was too bad youthful exuberance wasn't contagious in adults. I really could have used some of that to get me through the day. I offered to clean everyone's breakfast bowls, which helped wake me up a little bit.

I decided to check on the Mystic Answers message board while listening to the morning news in the background. The reporters were excited to talk to a local army lieutenant about the upcoming Freedom Day parade in Lucason. Traffic in the city was usually nightmarish around that time of year, so we always wound up watching the festivities on TV, which lasted all day and also included concerts and a fireworks show.

My welcome topic got two replies - one from a moderator, and one from a user who appeared to have been a member for several years, according to their profile.

"Welcome to the forums, WandWithADee!" the moderator, who went by the alias MysticMod101, posted. "Have you checked out your local library? They don't carry instruction manuals or spellbooks (only licensed magic shops are allowed to carry those), but you might be able to find some books on magic history or theory."

The veteran user, CarmineShade, chimed in a few hours after MysticMod101's post. "I don't know if it's going to be the same for you," they said, "but when I first applied for magic school, there was more of an emphasis on live demonstrations than reading. As long as you showed the testers that you knew a few spells and how they worked, you had a good chance of getting in. I practiced for several hours every day for two weeks until I could do those tricks without looking at a spellbook."

Several hours a day? For two straight weeks? Anyone with such a rigorous training schedule must have had superhuman patience. I wouldn't be able to take on such a big workload.

I bookmarked the forum on my phone's web browser so I'd have easy access to it from anywhere. My two greeters seemed friendly enough at first glance, but I wasn't ready to type my response to them until I investigated the library.

"Mom? Can I ride with you guys again?" I asked.

"Sure you can, sweetie," she said as she walked into the living room with a toasted bagel on a plate. "Studying again?"

"Yeah. I need to prepare myself for Thursday's entrance exam."

"Oh, that's right...you're going to that Lillian lady's school, aren't you? Promise me you'll let me know before you step outside to do any dangerous spellcasting this time, okay?"

"Of course!" I said, faking a smile. Luckily, there weren't supposed to be any thunderstorms all week. If any trouble arose, I didn't know if I would have been able to wave it away with my magic wand this time, anyway.

After Mom finished her bagel, we rode along with Dad to the library. The tall assistant, whom I missed during the blackout, was reading a short mystery novel over at the round table. She looked at the last page of the book for a second, skimmed backward for several pages, and then threw the book on the table in anger. "What a load of crap!" she grunted. "I can't believe I wasted my time reading this book for an ending like  _ that _ !"

"Corina! Please keep it down," Mom said in that tone of voice where it sounded like she wanted to yell, but couldn't for some reason.

The girl complied and put her book back on the shelf. "Sorry, Ms. Richardson."

I approached her slowly, hoping she would still be willing to help me out despite her dissatisfaction with her book's ending. "Excuse me…"

Corina turned around, looking irritated. "Yes?"

"Can you tell me where I can find books on magic?"

"The fantasy section's over there," she said, pointing at a sign a few shelves behind me that read "Fantasy". I didn't think she understood what I really meant, but I decided to humor her and search the section anyway.

After looking at every book on the shelves for a half-hour, I found more than a dozen potentially entertaining books about wizards, fairies, dragons, and other mythical creatures. None of them looked like they would give me anything I needed to make it through Try-Out Thursday...unless I was expected to show up with a surprise book report on  _ Violet Arcana _ .

"What about the reference section?" I asked. "Anything good in there?"

"I dunno. Not really my thing."

Since Corina was in no mood to help me, I went over to the reference section near the front desk and spent another half-hour looking through it on my own, finding even fewer relevant books there than in the fantasy section. This seemed unlikely and unfortunate considering the presence of a magic shop on the northwest side of town, along with several known magic users, myself included, who lived here. It wasn't a total wash, though. I found two interesting-looking books in that section - one on self-defense and another on the partial history of magical warfare. It was a good start, but I hoped to find something a little more than that later on.

I took those books and one of the five copies of  _ Violet Arcana _ to the front desk. Mom looked at my selection and stepped back while her boss checked my library card. It looked like they had a rule against family members serving each other, just like Ada's did.

"Where are you going after this, Deanna?" Mom asked.

"Home," I said as the head librarian put my books in a bag. "I might as well get started on my studies as soon as possible."

"Why not study here at the library? Help keep your mother company? You might run into someone else who might be able to help you…"

I took a quick look around the room behind me. Aside from Corina, who had gone back to the mystery section to find something else to read, there were a half-dozen teen girls and boys scattered around the library, probably looking to unwind after school had ended for the spring. There were two other guys who looked like they were about Elias' age, but I was pretty sure I'd come up empty if I tried to use a "Detect Magic" spell on them.

"No thanks."

"Okay then. Let me know when you get home."

"I will."

I nodded and headed to the bus stop with my books in hand.

* * *

 

After taking a seat toward the back of the bus, I opened the Mystic Answers website on my cell phone. It took me a few moments to remember my password because my phone had a different web browser than the family computer, so my information didn't carry over. A couple more users had welcomed me to the forum since my last visit, although none of them offered any new advice that MysticMod101 and CarmineShade hadn't already covered. I replied with a report of my findings to them. I wasn't sure when or if they would get back to me, so I decided to leave the topic alone and carry on with my studying once the bus dropped me off near my house.

First things first… I needed something good to eat for lunch.

I dropped my books on the couch and headed straight for the refrigerator, finding an unlabeled plastic container on the top shelf filled with sliced strawberries, pineapples, watermelons, and cantaloupes. I wondered if either Mom or Dad meant to take it to work with them, but accidentally left it behind. When I called Mom and asked her about it, she told me that it was for Dad. Since he had control of the car and there was no way for me to get it to him quickly, I called and asked if I could have some of his fruit cup.

"Oh, geez… Did I really forget my lunch today?" Dad sounded embarrassed. He hated it when he forgot to do something or left something important behind. "You can have some if you want. I guess I'll get something from the sandwich shop in a few minutes. Don't eat all of it, though; I got a good deal on it at your store, and they won't go on sale again for a while."

I took a small bowl from the cupboard and poured half of the fruit cup into it, saving the rest for Dad. The pineapples and strawberries were my favorites because they were the sweetest, and I mixed them in with the occasional watermelon or cantaloupe piece with each bite so that they wouldn't get neglected.

After that, it was time for me to start studying. First, I skimmed through the self-defense book,  _ Protect Yourself, Young Wizard! _ It mainly dealt with defending yourself against errant spells or other kinds of attackers, and it included a primer on a few different types of defensive spells. A simple "Shield" spell worked best in one-on-one encounters, as it only protected from attacks from the front. For multiple opponents or hazards, a full-body "Barrier" spell was a more appropriate choice. These spells also protected against more conventional attacks like blades or bullets, but the book advised that it was preferable to run away unless you could either disarm your attacker or shield yourself quickly enough for any attacks to bounce off it. I hoped I wouldn't have to use them in a real fight, but I added them to my notes anyway since I was only borrowing the books until after Try-Out Thursday.

I got a call from Sol just as I started reading from the second book,  _ Conjuring up Conflict: Unconventional Warfare in the Age of Magic _ .

"How are your studies going, Deanna?" she asked.

"Not quite as good as I was hoping," I said. "I don't even know what I'm really supposed to look out for."

"What are you doing to prepare?"

"I borrowed a couple of books from the library: one on self-defense and another on the history of magic and war."

"I think you might be overthinking this a little."

"Really? What do you mean?"

"Let's put it this way: have you ever been to college?"

I sat up on the couch wondering why Sol was asking these questions instead of, say, her mother. "Yeah…"

"Do you remember what your entrance exam was like? Was it easy? Was it hard?"

"I...don't know, actually," I said. "It happened several years ago, so my memory's pretty fuzzy."

"Then you can't really compare getting into Silverthorne School to whatever college you went to before, right?"

"No, I suppose not. Where are you, by the way?"

Sol stopped for a second to think. "At my brother's place. Want to say 'hi' to him?"

"Maybe later," I said.

"Are you sure? We're going to be leaving soon, so you might want to get your call in now while you can."

I sighed. "All right...put him on."

A moment later, I heard Caleb's voice over the phone instead of Sol's. "Hello?"

"Hi, there! Caleb, was it?"

"Yeah..." Caleb loudly cleared his throat and excused himself. "Sorry… I haven't been feeling well lately."

"I'm sorry to hear that. Do you have a sore throat or something?"

"That's only part of it," he said quietly, "but it's what bugs me the most. So you're one of Mari's new friends, huh?"

"'Mari'? Oh, you mean 'Marisol'," I chuckled. "Yeah, you could say that."

"I'm glad to see she's going out to meet new people. I didn't expect her to actually rope anyone into that weird hobby of hers."

"Magic?"

"Yeah. She tried to get me into it, too. I told Mari I couldn't do it because the guys down at the station would give me funny looks."

Sol's brother was a cop? Was  _ that _ the reason Lydia drove so close to those crime scenes? So they could get a chance to see him while he was on duty?

"Actually," I said, "we saw this one guard near that magic shop using something that might have been magical, so if he could do it, I don't see why you wouldn't be allowed."

"Not in the line of work I'm in."

As I was talking to Caleb, I heard the rustle of the mailman fiddling with the mailbox outside. In the brief moment of silence after Caleb had said his piece, I got up to answer the door and retrieve the mail.

"Oh, wait a sec… Mari wants to talk to you again," Caleb said. "It was nice talking to you, uh--"

"Deanna," I said as I spread the mail out on the coffee table. "Hope you feel better soon, Caleb."

"Thanks. That would be nice…"

While I wondered if I would ever get to meet Caleb in person, Sol came back from what she was doing earlier to answer the phone. "Now, as I was saying… You might be a bit too hung up on thinking of Silverthorne as a regular school. All you're going there for is to learn magic, right? So forget about the books and all that extra stuff for now. Concentrate on what counts first and foremost."

"Are you sure about this, Sol?" I asked.

"Trust me. If they ever ask you about that military or war stuff, it'll probably be  _ after _ you get in."

Sol was starting to sound like CarmineShade. I conceded that they might have a point - actual knowledge of spells was more likely to impress the examiners than the deeper history behind them. Still, I didn't want to waste the new books I borrowed, so I set aside some time on Wednesday morning to read them, if only just for fun.

"Thanks, Sol. I'll get back to you as soon as I get the results."

"Alright, Deanna… Good luck!" Sol said, and hung up.

I dug through the pile on the table and found my payment check from Cherry's among the bills. There wasn't any post-payment euphoria this time; I hadn't even figured out a way to integrate a trip to the bank into my study-week plans. It didn't take long for me to fall asleep on the couch hoping that I'd have enough energy to practice all the spells I'd learned before the night was out. Not "several hours a day every day", of course...just enough to know how to use them consistently without referring to my notes.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow! 18 chapters?! I didn't think I'd make it this far.
> 
> From the look of things, I'm two or three chapters close to the end of what can charitably be called "Volume 1" of Through the Motions. Once that last chapter goes up, I'm going to take a break for the rest of the year to try to assess what I've written so far, and use some of that knowledge to start planning for the next major story arc (as well as filling in a lot of blanks on the TTM wiki). Thanks to everyone who's read this story so far, whether here or on other sites. I hope that those of you who are still reading TTM continue to stick with it!

Following Sol's advice, I set aside the two books I borrowed from the library so I could focus on spending the next couple of days refining and testing the limits of every spell I knew. Learning how to properly control objects in mid-air and set them down without being too noisy or making a mess, figuring out which surfaces and objects produced the best sound with "Echo", and finding the right light levels to use "Glow" without blinding myself felt as thorough a workout as a trip to the gym.

On Tuesday morning after Dad went to work, Mom asked me to help her vacuum the carpets on both floors. It took us half as much time to clean up since we had two vacuum cleaners, and that gave us time to stop and watch the Freedom Day parade on TV. Rows of soldiers marched in unison around the city carrying rifles and twirling batons as a two-dozen-strong brass band marched behind them, playing uplifting and patriotic tunes for the crowd. The whole thing was an impressive sight to behold. I wanted to go to one of those parades one day, perhaps bringing a set of earplugs to dampen the band noise if I got a front-row seat. Those trumpets and horns could get really loud sometimes.

That afternoon, Mom and I ate some canned cream of mushroom soup for lunch. My bowl still felt a bit cold after following the preparation instructions on the can. Mom thought so too, and she beat me to the microwave to reheat her soup. She turned around a minute after putting her bowl in, wagging a finger at me. "Don't even think about it, Deanna," she said.

"Huh? But I wasn't going any--"

Mom looked down and saw my feet pointed toward the sink and not the microwave. "Hm...I could have sworn I heard your sneakers squeaking. If you're thinking of trying to use your magic wand to reheat your soup...just use the microwave. It may not be as fast, but it's a lot safer. Trust me."

Using "Warm" to heat up my soup hadn't crossed my mind. I didn't want to try that spell out without knowing _how_ hot my food would get. There had to be a more practical use for "Warm" and its colder counterpart, "Chill", but that experiment would have to wait for another day. My hunger could not.

My mushroom soup turned out fine after a minute in the microwave, but it still felt like it was missing something. Maybe it was the cheap Dollar Shack can or the barely-there mushrooms that were throwing off the taste. Mom believed she could do better, so we went to Ada's to buy some fresh ingredients to make our own from scratch. I agreed to help her cook it so that we could both have a dinner we could be proud of. We saved some for Dad when he came home, but he only seemed to like the mushrooms. He thought the cream was gross, no matter who cooked it.

* * *

 

Wednesday was the day when I did the most practicing. Apparently, it rained overnight, leaving a lot of puddles on the sidewalk. Thinking back to my day of cleanup duty at Ada's, I tried "lifting" one of the puddles on the sidewalk outside my house, only to wind up splashing it on a nearby parked car. I scrambled inside in a vain attempt to deny responsibility, but it was pointless since at least two people saw me do it. Next time, I planned on carrying an old washcloth with me to clean up after such experiments.

It looked like it was possible to use magic on solids and liquids, but until I learned how to shape those liquids, I would just end up splashing water everywhere. It was too bad there wasn't anything in my _Simple Spells_ book that would help me learn how to do that. It looked like another trip to the Blank Scroll was in order.

While I'd refrained from casting magic on anyone else since I got my wand, I wondered what kind of effect some of these weird spells would have on other people. I wasn't about to ask Mom or Dad to be my guinea pigs for this experiment, so I had no choice but to try casting a spell on myself and assume that the results would apply to cases just like mine.

I held out my left arm and zapped it with a "Lift" spell, and it hurt almost as much as being jabbed with that magic crystal. I didn't know if I would actually be able to move my arm around with the wand since I had to jerk it away so quickly, but I certainly did _not_ want to try that again.

After spending some time icing down my arm, I tried "Lifting" myself again, but aiming for a less exposed part of my body this time. The beam caught the sleeve of my T-shirt, suspending it in mid-air as if I was being pulled along by an invisible fishing hook. Waving my wand arm around caused my shirt to move accordingly. It was probably a good thing that I couldn't use that force to pick myself up off the ground. That would have been a very awkward and painful way for me to learn how to float. I wanted so badly to learn how Deuce Clover did it. Sol made it sound easy, even without going into the finer details…

When I relaxed my grip on the wand, my shirt fell back down along with it. I needed to take a break, anyway. My right hand was cramping up, so I double-checked it to confirm that nothing had been damaged. No matter how many times I looked at the enchanter's sign on my palm, I couldn't help wincing. I hoped that Dr. Keller could find a way to get rid of that hole, even if it meant closing it surgically. The last thing I wanted was for the hole to expand to the point where I couldn't use my hand anymore.

Around lunchtime, I figured I'd give Dustin a call at the Blank Scroll and ask him about some of the more advanced spellbooks. For a small store that seemed to go to great pains to make its store location as inconspicuous as possible, finding its phone number in the directory was trivial.

"Blank Scroll… if you found this number, you didn't hear it from us," Dustin answered, sounding like he was ready to hang up the phone before I could start talking. If that really was his store phone greeting, I didn't know whether to tell him to be nicer or applaud him for staying in character.

"Yeah, hi...it's Deanna from downtown," I said.

I waited for a second to see if he remembered me and whether he was going to address me by name.

"What can I help you with?"

So much for that.

"Let's see… Do you have any books for sale for someone who's about to attend a magic school?"

"I might," he said. "How much have you read from the other book you bought?"

"Most of it," I told him.

"Read all of it," he said immediately afterward. "Don't try to move on to the more advanced subjects until you get a good grasp of the basics. Hold on to your money until then, okay?"

"Uh, okay… In fact, I was actually practicing from that spellbook before I called you."

"Good, good. I'm sure Lillian will be interested in seeing what you have to show her."

How did Dustin know which school I was going to? I'm sure he saw Lillian give me her business card, but I hadn't told him that I'd committed to attending.

"I see a lot of things in my line of work, Ms. Richardson," he continued, "and I hear a lot, too...mostly from Lillian."

I decided to ask him straight out. "Did she tell you whether or not I was going to sign up at her school?"

"No. I figured that _someone_ would have answered her call eventually."

"I see. Thanks for the tip! I should probably get going, too."

"Okay, then. Good luck."

I was surprised that Dustin actually said something nice to me. I wasn't going to let that brief gesture of goodwill go to waste. My right hand was feeling a little better, so I was going to get right back to practicing...as soon as I recharged my magic wand.

Midway through my magic dance, I overheard a group of teenagers screaming and cursing at each other not too far from my house. I didn't like getting involved in other people's squabbles, but it sounded like the mob was slowly approaching my house, so I scrambled inside from the backyard and rushed into the living room to see what was going on.

One group of teens was five strong, while their opponents were only a group of three. All of the teens in the larger group were wearing identical olive green jackets. I couldn't find any lettering or symbols on them to determine whether they were from some other high school or part of a gang. Some more shouting ensued, and the two parties came to blows. This wasn't anything like baseball brawls where both sides yelled at each other for a few moments and shoved each other around before being told to return to their benches. This quickly erupted into a full-on brawl, with punching, kicking, stomping, and headbutting in abundance.

I ducked behind the couch and called the police right away. Someone must have seen me in the window, for as soon as I finished my call, a rock crashed through one of the windows, leaving a large hole in it and scattering hundreds of shards on the floor. I would have cursed out the reckless idiot who broke my window if it wouldn't risk me revealing my position. Accident or not, I wasn't going to let them do it again.

Even if I wanted to dive in and try to break up the fight myself before the police arrived, I was too far away to "Lift" any of the fighters. My only option was to try to protect my property in case someone from that group tried to break into my house. It was time for me to find out just what a good "Shield" spell could do.

With my back pressed against the front door, I drew a large shield in the air in front of me, creating a large translucent barrier of hard light. It looked real enough to reach out and touch, but it didn't have a handle for me to grip. It appeared to be controlled by my magic wand. When I lifted my right hand up, it rose, and when I lowered my hand, it fell down.

I lifted the shield over the couch and coffee table to avoid knocking anything over. Trying to aim it toward the window without being seen was harder than I thought. I had to lie down near the shards of glass to stay out of sight, and that made it harder for me to see if I was holding my shield properly. It didn't take long for me to find out if it worked or not because a second rock flew through the window a minute later, slamming into my magical barrier with a sharp "ping" sound. Some of the shards of glass slid off the barrier and onto the floor, but the rock didn't fall down with them. I figured it must have fallen onto the front lawn somewhere, but I was too scared to get up and check.

A chorus of police and ambulance sirens drowned out the shouting. I lowered my shield and looked out the window to see most of the fighters being dragged into police cars. One of the teens from each side of the brawl were taken in separate ambulances to get their injuries treated. I wondered what happened to get them all riled up in the first place, and then I looked down at the shattered glass on the floor and wondered which one of them would pay for breaking my window.

One of the police officers approached the front door after speaking with some of her colleagues and the medical team. It looked like Officer Yates from afar, but I couldn't tell for sure until she got close enough that I could see her through the peephole. "Sharonia P.D.! Is everything okay in there?" she asked.

"I think so," I said.

"May I come in and look around?"

I opened the door to let Officer Yates in, guiding her over the broken glass. "Hey, wait a minute! You're the woman from the library, aren't you?" she asked. "Richardson, was it?"

"Yeah, that's me," I said, not even bothering to put on a happy face. It wasn't easy to stay calm or look heroic in her presence after everything that happened.

"So, uh..." the officer said, her mouth agape as she looked down at the wreckage. "Were you the one who made the initial phone call? Can you give me an account of what you witnessed?"

I nodded, and then sat down on the sofa before telling her everything I saw - the fight, the first rock, and my attempt to shield myself from the second rock. After she finished my interview, Officer Yates held up the camera hanging around her neck and took pictures of the shattered glass, and then stopped to jot down even more notes about the incident. I thought it would have been easier for her to use her cell phone for all of that, but I figured she had her reasons for not doing so.

After the officer put her camera down, she quickly examined me for any cuts and bruises. "You don't look to be seriously hurt or anything. That's good," she said. "Ms. Richardson, did you see who threw the rocks at your window, or where they came from?"

"Nope."

"So you don't think anyone - out of the suspects who were fighting, that is - specifically targeted you?"

"I-I don't know! I don't recognize any of them."

Officer Yates and I looked at the damage done to the window. Two of the bottom panes had holes in them, with the one on the right larger than the one on the left. Neither appeared to be in danger of immediate collapse, but it looked like it would take a lot of work to patch them up - work that I couldn't afford on my salary.

I followed her outside as we both took pictures of the window and the surrounding debris. Mom and Dad were going to flip out when I showed them what happened.

"We're going to continue our investigation so that we can find out who started the fight, and why," Officer Yates said.

"What about my window?" I fretted. "Who's going to help me pay to fix it?"

The officer shook her head. "Unfortunately, Ms. Richardson, until we identify the culprit and bring them to trial, there isn't much else we can do. I would suggest getting in touch with your insurance company and find out if they can help you foot the bill for some of it. Window repair can be really expensive out here, you know."

Once I got permission from Officer Yates, I cautiously stepped around the glass and retrieved the broom and dustpan from the kitchen, realizing that the rest of my afternoon was going to be spent cleaning up the living room. I clutched the broom tighter and tighter as I swept, briefly entertaining the pipe dream of seeking out the vandal and dealing with them personally. I heard Officer Yates laughing at me as I brushed the shards of glass wide to the left of the dustpan, so I had to stop for a minute and breathe deeply before continuing so that I didn't make a bigger mess.

"Sorry that we had to meet again like this," I said.

"Don't worry about it," she told me. "The fact that you made it through this without a scratch is impressive in its own way. I'm surprised that you guys don't have some kind of security system in this house. We'd be able to contact you more quickly if something like this happens again or, God forbid, someone tries to break in and steal your stuff."

I hoped that it wouldn't have to come to that, but I also wanted to know if the company behind SCRB also handled conventional, non-magical alarm systems, as well. Either way, it was one more expense Mom and Dad would have to add to a growing list that already included utilities, gas, food, and now a broken window. Sooner or later, I was going to have to leave Ada's behind and find a better job to help them pay for everything.

"Thank you for your cooperation, Ms. Richardson," Officer Yates said. "We'll let you know if we obtain any new information on this case. Take care, now!"

I waved to the officer as she stepped out of the living room, offering a final tip of her hat before closing the front door. After she left, I stopped cleaning for a few minutes to put my wand away. I felt like I had studied enough to impress the scouts at the Silverthorne School, and I didn't feel like doing any more after witnessing that brawl. All that was left for me to do was tell Mom and Dad and hope that they wouldn't be _too_ mad about what happened.


End file.
